Market is Thirsty for Open Source! Are You Equipped?

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THE COMPLETE MAGAZINE ON OPEN SOURCE

VOLUME: 07   ISSUE: 09   November 2009  116 PAGES   ISSUE# 82

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Contents NOVEMBER 2009  •  Vol. 07  No. 9  •  ISSN 0974-1054

FOR YOU & ME

22 “I Wanna Be Your Hero Baby,”
says HTC Sense!
28 Super, Simple Security
32 Thirst for FOSS at the Job
Market!
38 GIMP for Beginners, Part 5:
‘Isolation’
42 Experiencing Sabayon 5 oh!
46 Can the Minimalist Approach of

Android
CDlinux Win You Over?

experience developers

taken to a new level 66 Introducing the Pardusman

Project—A Google Summer of
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22 76 Get A Hold on the Scheduler
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54 54 Turbo Boost your PC:

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in Linux
62 Make Your Own Media Centre
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72 Electronic Design and
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66 90 'Typesetting' Presentations 50
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  |  NOVEMBER 2009  |  LINUX For You  |  www.LinuxForU.com

Contents Editor
Rahul chopra

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www.LinuxForU.com  |  LINUX For You  |  NOVEMBER 2009  |  

 Editorial
Dear Readers,
When netbooks first emerged, Linux was
considered the only viable solution for these
devices. However, as it happens all the time with
the market tactics of a certain other player, the
open source OS has almost disappeared from
these devices too. Nowadays, it’s become really
hard to find a netbook with preinstalled Linux.
So, what’s to be done? We can either wait
for the market dynamics to change or take
matters into our own hands and drive this
change ourselves—like we did with laptops
in the past. Our persistence in not using that
other OS, has made even a heavyweight like
Dell offer Ubuntu preinstalled—although not
in all parts of the globe! But then, we should
continue to campaign.The easiest is to choose
the path of ‘format and reinstall’!
We can bring the concept of format and
reinstall to netbooks too. So, here’s an open
question: Which distro do you run on your
netbook? Ping us, because we’d love to hear
from you. Meanwhile, if you’re planning to buy
one, which brand and model would you like to
go for? I guess, you are also wondering whether
it would run Linux, if at all!
Currently, the scenario with netbook
hardware compatibly is as dicey as it was with
laptops, half a decade ago. Things have changed,
for the better over the last few years. If we
don’t get Linux preinstalled on our laptop, we
can exercise our rights to format and reinstall,
without worrying about whether the hardware
will support Linux or not. With respect to
netbooks now, our job is to test these devices
and flood the Web (and print) with information
on netbook models that are Linux compatible.
Okay, it’s now time for me to make a
confession: after getting an overwhelming
number of queries from our readers, we thought
it was about time we picked up the topic and
did our bit. So, come next month, we hope to
present you with a comparison of hardware
features, as well as the Linux compatibility of
some of the netbook models available in the
Indian market. Also, we’ll try to analyse which
netbook OS is the best fit, as of now.
Talking about OS, as I write this editorial,
  |  NOVEMBER 2009  |  LINUX For You  |  www.LinuxForU.com
Distrowatch has just announced the release of
Ubuntu 9.10 RC. The final release is on October
29. Mandriva 2010 is at RC2, with the final
scheduled for November 3. If things go as per
schedule, by the time you are reading this both
the distros should be out. You may wonder if
these are possible inclusions for our December
issue… Of course, they are!
By the way, openSUSE 11.2 final is scheduled
for November 12. Now what do we do about
that? Ubuntu fits into a CD, while Mandriva
takes up a DVD. Does that mean we’ll make
you wait for another month for openSUSE?
Meanwhile Fedora 12 is also scheduled for
November 17 (unfortunately, the date is too late
to be considered as a DVD option. Phew!). So,
what’s in January 2010? Fedora or openSUSE?
The easiest is to choose
the path of ‘format
and reinstall’!
Personally, I wouldn’t have wanted to wait
for months before laying my hands on the
latest distro. And let’s face it, these are the BIG
ones! A colleague made a suggestion—hike the
magazine’s price by Rs 10, go for a dual-layer
DVD and fit in both openSUSE and Mandriva.
Sounds like a deal? You bet!
But why a price hike? Well, that’s to cover
the additional cost of a dual-layer DVD. And
this will only affect those who buy it from the
newsstands—the subscribers are safe! Another
reason why you should subscribe ;-)
With that, I’ll stop the self promotion. Hope
you enjoy reading the November issue before
we come back in December with a blast!
Best Wishes!
Rahul Chopra
Editor, LFY
rahul@efyindia.com
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You said it…
It’s good to see the Slackware
Linux and OpenOffice 3 CD/DVD
with the October issue. Thanks for it.
I read the feedback from fellow
reader Hartmut in the ‘You Said It’
section about the lack of hardware
support in Linux. First of all, I would like
to share my experience on Linux...
A few months back while
downloading Debian Lenny on
my new Dell Inspiron 1525 laptop
(unfortunately, on Windows Vista), I
thought of having an alternate Internet
connection using my Nokia 3220 (which
is pretty old!) phone. I downloaded the
Nokia PC suite for Windows, purchased
the data cable for less than 200 rupees
(surely it wasn’t Nokia’s) and thought it
would work. But alas... the Nokia Suite
(running on Windows) didn’t recognise
my phone even after installing the
phone’s cable driver, and this was only
because of the cheap cable. This forced
me to drop my plans as purchasing a
branded data cable would have cost me
more than Rs 500 (at least).
So I installed Debian Lenny and
tried to connect (using the same phone
and the cheap cable) to the Internet
using the wvdial method, which is also
mentioned in the October issue’s Q&A
section. Wow! It not only recognised the
phone’s modem, it worked very smoothly
(out-of-the-box) and I didn’t need to
replace the cable either. It saved me from
having to spend extra money too.
As far as printers are concerned, I
have used HP 3550 and 656c, which are
older models and they too worked well
on Linux (again, out-of-the-box), while
on Windows, I’ve had to search for the
Vista drivers for these models to work
(which I didn’t even try to do).
So, from my point of view, I don’t
think that there is lack of hardware
support in Linux. Instead, maybe there
is lack of ‘easy’ support because we have
to do a lot of research/googling to find
out what the problem is before getting
the solution. But being a Linuxer, that’s
part of the fun, right?
  |  NOVEMBER 2009  |  LINUX For You  |  www.LinuxForU.com
I don’t deny that there might be
some problem with the Epson printer/
scanner Hartmut is using, but the Linux
community support is so strong that the
solution will be out soon. And at least,
it’s not that kind of ‘proprietary’ support
where you have to send chains of e-mails
or select a number of options just to
explain, “The driver is not supported;
could you please provide a new driver,”
and finally get a response like, “Sorry sir,
we don’t support this model anymore!”
—Anant Vyas, anant.vyas23@
gmail.com
I write this mail regarding
feedback on the Epson printer not
working on Mandriva 2009.1. Let me share
a story with you. I bought my HP
Photosmart D5368 printer in April this
year. It has a host of non-standard printing
features, including printing directly onto
CDs and DVDs, plus automating paper
type detection and verification (if I select
plain paper as the paper type but feed in
photo paper, it will not print). And, it
connects via USB. My computer is also
self-made, with an ASUS M2N-CM DVI
MoBo and a 2.3 GHz triple-core AMD
Phenom processor.
The printer came with two CDs—one
with drivers for Windows and Mac, and
another with CD label printing software,
for Windows only. At that time, I was using
Windows XP Media Centre Edition 2005
SP3, and Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackpole.
I unpacked my printer, plugged it in,
switched on my PC, booted Ubuntu and
printed. A perfect test page came out. I
even verified that CD printing worked. Cut
to Windows XP; I went through the two
CDs, and then went through a series of
IRQ conflicts, reconnected cables at least a
dozen times and installed a second device
node for my printer before I could print.
I believe your problem lies with the I/O
controller on your motherboard, which
manages the USB ports. Either that’s faulty,
or the standard USB drivers don’t work
properly with it.
For the future, I would also suggest
you switch your printer to an HP model.
When I purchased mine, Canon Pixmas,
with better quality at half the price, were
available. I stuck with HP because of the
HPLIP (Hewlett Packard Linux Imaging
Project) where HP developers work to
make open source drivers available for
Linux and BSD. This is probably the only
instance where the device manufacturer
works on fully free open sourced drivers,
which support the full functionality (not
merely the ‘just works’ bit).
—Boudhayan Gupta, bg13.ina@
gmail.com
This long drawn-out discussion
seems to be related to just a single
specific problem. I use Ubuntu on a
Compaq Pentium 4 (2004 model) desktop
and bought an Epson Stylus CX2800 (USB
printer-cum-scanner) in 2007 on the
assurance from an Epson sales executive
that it would work in both Windows and
Linux, and that the company’s trained
technician would install it on both. The
‘trained’ technician who came, however,
did not know what Linux was and made a
mess of installing it even on Windows. I
had to uninstall and reinstall it in
Windows, by following the instructions
from the installation CD. For Linux I had to
turn to the Internet.
Epson mentions only the Windows
operating system in its requirements,
and gave only Windows drivers and
installation files in the CD. However, it
has an associate [www.avasys.jp] that
develops and maintains a repository
of Linux drivers/installation files for
various models of printers, scanners and
MFDs. We have to download it from the
associate’s site. The procedures given
are lengthy CLI steps. I succeeded in
installing the printer, but it performed
only a few of the functionalities compared
to its performance on Windows. But then
I could swiftly install the printer with
complete functionality from the Ubuntu
GUI using the driver for model number
CX3800, which is built into Ubuntu. I
could not install the scanner, and had to
You said it…
hang on to Windows only for that reason.
After reading about this matter in
the October 2009 issue of LFY, I went
back to avasys.jp hoping that in the
meantime Epson would have developed
a friendlier Linux installer for the scanner.
Sure enough, it was there—a .deb file
specifically meant for Ubuntu. The scanner
was installed in a jiffy through the Ubuntu
GUI in just two mouse clicks. Finally, I
celebrated my liberation from Windows
with a glass of wine.
—JS Karkada, eddykabootar@
yahoo.com
Thank you for doing such a
wonderful job of promoting the
open source concept. To be frank, I was a
hardcore Windows user and supporter
but after coming across LFY, my views
have changed a lot and now I use only
Linux (CentOS). I like to stay updated
about the latest software and especially
the operating systems. I don’t have a
broadband Internet connection, which
prevents me from downloading the OS
ISO images. But thanks to the LFY team,
this problem has been taken care of by
the magazine providing us with the
latest operating systems every month.
After reading the last issue I came to
know about the System Rescue CD and
I downloaded it. I was quite fascinated
by the disk cloning facilities provided by
partimage. However, I have a query. If
two of my systems have totally dissimilar
hardware except the CPU architectures
(i.e., if both are x86 systems), will the
clone of one of the systems work on the
other system?
—Anirban Saha,
anirbansaha2009@gmail.com
ED: Thanks for sharing your feedback
and encouraging us to keep doing better.
We are glad that we could help you enjoy
the world of open source. As for the query
on partimage, I would like to invite the
author to take charge.
Rajesh Sola: As far as Linux is
concerned, it is highly portable—i.e., the
10  |  NOVEMBER 2009  |  LINUX For You  |  www.LinuxForU.com
OS installed on one PC works well with
most other systems even if the hardware,
besides the CPU architecture, is different. So
the same thing applies to images taken by
partimage. But most of the time, the display
will not work immediately when a graphics
card changes. In such a case, you need to
modify your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file as per
your new display settings by booting to the
fail-safe/recovery mode. When I tried to use
an Ubuntu image across systems with AMD,
Intel P3 and P4 processors, it worked well on
tweaking the display settings.
So the bottom line is compatibility and
depends on how a particular OS is portable
to different hardware—there is no role
played by partimage here. It’s like checking
the compatibility of an OS when the hard
disk is removed from one machine and
plugged into other.
A small clarification on the term
‘cloning’ used in the query: ‘cloning’ means
to copy the disk or partitions (which is
done by g4u). The operations done by
partimage can be referred to as imaging or
back-up/restore partitions.
You guys really rock and I like
your site. I looked for an option
to submit a case study/article but I
couldn’t find any direct option. Could
I know the procedure? Also, I wanted
to know whether you only accepted
articles based on Linux?
—Malini, malithenerd@gmail.
com
ED: Thanks! The ‘Write for Us’ link
is on the website’s top grey bar :-) Here’s
the direct link www.linuxforu.com/
write-for-linux-for-you.
I read LFY regularly and feel
very happy about the content
and presentation. It is very
informative for students as well as the
faculty members, especially for those
who pursue the FOSS philosophy. We,
at the department of computer
science and engineering, Govt.
Engineering College
Sreekrishnapuram, Palakkad, Kerala,
have completely switched to Linux,
and have started reaping the benefits.
At the same time, I have a feeling
that a magazine such as yours shall
not promote negative tendencies like
animosity towards a firm or product
(Microsoft or any other) and should
discourage events like Winblast
(mentioned in Aug09 issue as part of
a FOSSday celebration). Our approach
should be based only on technical
considerations and let the consumer
decide which is best for him.
I would also like to mention that
a student group graduated from our
institution has set up a reasonably
successful venture specializing in
ERP solutions based on Open Source
Software at the Technology-Business
Incubator at National Institute of Calicut.
—Dr P C Reghu Raj, professor
and head, department of computer
science and engineering
ED: Thank you for sharing your
valuable feedback. We're indeed
delighted to know about the 100 per cent
FOSS-powered department of computer
science at your college. Also please pass
on our congratulations to the students
who undertook the project at the
National Institute of Calicut.
We also appreciate your concerns
regarding ‘Microsoft bashing'. As a
magazine, we certainly don't encourage
animosity towards any firm or product.
The Winblast event is just an inside joke,
and is quite widespread across colleges.
Anyway, we'd try to keep away from ‘useless'
Microsoft bashing whenever required.
Please send your comments or suggestions to:
The Editor
LINUX FOR YOU Magazine
D-87/1, Okhla Industrial Area, Phase I,
New Delhi 110020
Phone: 011-26810601/02/03
Fax: 011-26817563
Email: lfyedit@efyindia.com,
Website: www.openITis.com
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  I have the Fedora 11 DVD
that came with your magazine.
I am currently using Windows
Server 2003, which I would like to
remove and replace with Fedora
11 for DNS and proxy servers.
However, I don't know how to
create the DNS with Fedora 11.
Please guide me on how to create
the DNS server for my institute.
—Dange Laxmikant, Nanded,
Maharashtra
To install and configure the DNS
server, you need to install the BIND
(Berkeley Internet Name Domain)
DNS server. The best way to install
BIND is by using the yum package
manager as follows, after making sure
you're connected to the Internet:
#yum install bind
This will install all necessary
packages. Now go through the
documentation on BIND at http://
www.redhat.com/docs/en-US/Red_
Hat_Enterprise_Linux/5.4/html/
Deployment_Guide/ch-bind.html and
configure your server.
You can also install Squid to make
your Fedora 11 a proxy server using
yum. Here are the steps for a basic
Squid installation and configuration:
#yum isnstall squid
Open the /etc/squid/squid.conf
in any text editor and define an ACL
12  |  NOVEMBER 2009  |  LINUX For You  |  www.LinuxForU.com
(access control list). The following is
an example of an ACL statement:
acl my_network src 192.168.1.0/24
http_access allow my_network
Remember to change the IP
address as per your network. The
default port is TCP 3128, which you
can change by putting the following
statement in the file:
http_port 8080
Now save and close the file before
starting the Squid server as follows:
# /etc/init.d/squid start
Run the following commands so
that Squid starts automatically when
you reboot your system.
# chkconfig squid on
On the client machine, open a
Web browser and configure it to use
the proxy settings.
You can go through the squid.conf
file and make other changes as per
your requirements.
  I have installed CentOS 5.3
on my server. I often use yum to
install and update packages.
I want to know if there is any
way I can just download all
the RPMs that are needed to
install a package along with its
dependencies.
—Mohan M, Chennai
In order to only download
packages using Yum, you need to
install the yum-downloadonly plug-in:
# yum install yum-downloadonly
Now, run the following command:
# yum update firefox -y --downloadonly
This will download and store the
packages in the /var/cache/yum/
directory. You can even specify a
directory of your choice, as follows:
# yum update firefox -y --downloadonly \
--downloaddir=/tmp/lfy/
yum will download all the
packages needed to update Firefox,
but will not install any of them.
Instead, it will quit with a message
after the download is complete,
similar to what is shown below:
exiting because --downloadonly specified
  I use Fedora Core 6 on one of
my systems. I often face problems
while unmounting my CD-ROM
drive. I get a message stating that
the device is busy, even when I run
the eject /dev/hdc from a terminal.
Please help me resolve the issue.
—Neelam, Kanpur
Try the following command…
# fuser -km /dev/hdc
...and then:
# eject /dev/hdc
This should work!
  I'm really new to Linux. I want
to play MP3 files. Please guide me
through the whole procedure and
terminal commands.
—Syed Aamiruddin, by e-mail
Please follow the steps given
in the following site: https://
help.ubuntu.com/community/
RestrictedFormats 
FOSS Bytes
OSS changing the face of content management market: Report
The content management market is seeing dramatic changes thanks to new Motorola dumps LiMo
open source and commercial open source entries that are making significant for Android!
inroads with customers. According to The Definitive Guide to Today’s Content Motorola is busy focusing on
Management Systems and Vendors, a new 150-page report series from Basex, Google’s Android these days, and
a knowledge economy has quit the LiMo Foundation.
research firm, the advent of Christy Wyatt, vice president,
open source software has software applications and
significantly changed the ecosystems, Motorola, mentioned
process of selecting a content that she was no longer on the
management solution. board of the LiMo Foundation,
The report series looks at as reported by PC World. The
32 key content management company has decided to remain as
vendors and 43 platforms, an associate member and retain
and provides an analysis— an active role as a contributing
including market trends, member. As a result, Motorola is
drivers, and barriers—to guide now no longer listed as a founder
decision makers in the selection process. Basex estimates that the US market member on the LiMo website; it
for content management was $4.1 billion in 2008 and will reach $10 billion by is also now ineligible to run for a
2014. Open source content management is gaining traction in some circles and board seat. In 2010, the company
the overall open source software market is growing rapidly. plans to release a host of mobile
The report reveals that choosing the right content management system phones that will use Google’s
is far from straightforward and requires an in-depth understanding of both Android OS.
the organisation’s needs and what the market has to offer. It points out that
companies need to be prepared to manage multiple forms of content, including SCO fires CEO McBride
wikis, blogs, RSS feeds, social networks, podcasts and video. Also, companies UNIX software vendor SCO,
that spend hundreds of thousands of dollars for content management systems struggling through bankruptcy
might do equally well with platforms that cost one-tenth that amount. and a UNIX copyright trial, has
fired president and CEO Darl
Palm to open doors to WebOS developers by Dec McBride. This move, along with
Following up on the release of the beta app catalogue e-commerce programme, a restructuring effort, came after
Palm is planning to open its app distribution programme to the entire Palm an operations and cost analysis
WebOS developer community by the end of the year. Under the programme, performed by SCO’s Chapter 11
developers will receive 70 per cent of the revenue after tax deductions. trustee. Since the CEO position
Developers who charge for their software was eliminated, its management
will need to set up a PayPal account to team now consists of COO Jeff
receive their share of revenue from Palm, Hunsaker, CFO Ken Nielsen and
who will keep 30 per cent. Customers will general counsel Ryan Tibbitts. SCO
initially be able to purchase applications says it will finalise details of the
with MasterCard and Visa. restructuring and reach “…cash
The company’s membership-based flow break-even for core operations”
programme will have a $99 annual fee for within a month. A “modest
developers of proprietary applications, reduction in SCO’s workforce” and
while developers of open source software other changes will help improve
won’t be required to pay the programme SCO’s financial position, the
fee, states the company blog. As announced company says. SCO
in August, the company is accepting applications to the beta app catalogue e- is attempting to
commerce program for distribution on the catalogue. raise additional
Palm also plans to launch a full-scale developer program to encourage third- funding and sell
party applications for its WebOS platform by the end of the year, and is making non-core assets.
a special pitch to open source developers.

14  |  NOVEMBER 2009  |  LINUX For You  |  www.LinuxForU.com

FOSS Bytes
Nokia releases official
IBM responds to Windows 7 launch with Ubuntu Desktop Qt port to Maemo 5
With an aim to take away the forthcoming market share from Microsoft’s Nokia has announced the creation
most talked-about Windows 7 (launched on October 22, 2009), the biggest of the official Qt port to Maemo 5
rival IBM is teaming up with Canonical against Windows 7. In September, and published an initial Technology
the company struck a partnership with Canonical, which resulted in the Preview release. This port to Maemo
launch of an Ubuntu-based desktop bundle in Africa. Now, the cloud 5 means that developers can now use
and Ubuntu-based software package, which is part of IBM’s Smart Work Qt to target the upcoming Nokia N900
Initiative, will soon be debuting in the US. device, and also
Independent market estimates range up to $2,000 for the cost of ensures that
migrating to the Windows 7 operating system for many PC users. New applications
PC hardware requirements account for a significant portion of the added can be easily
expense. However, the Ubuntu-based desktop package ported to all
includes IBM’s free Lotus Symphony productivity suite; Qt’s supported
e-mail from IBM Lotus Notes or the cloud-based LotusLive platforms
iNotes which starts at $3 per user, per month; Cloud-based, including
social networking and collaboration tools from LotusLive. the next Maemo 6 release, as well as
com from $10 per user, per month; and Ubuntu, an open Symbian and Windows Mobile.
platform for netbooks, laptops, desktops, and servers. It is designed specifically to work
The IBM Client for Smart Work will only arrive in the U.S. in 2010 despite within the Maemo 5 environment,
IBM positioning it to rival Windows 7 in the enterprise market. It will be which will power the Nokia N900
available both as a run-of-the-mill desktop and as a virtualised desktop. device. The port itself will be based
on Qt’s upcoming version 4.6 and is
scheduled for release in Q1 of 2010. Visit
LF announces second annual End User Summit qt.nokia.com/maemo for details.
The Linux Foundation has announced the speaker line-up and details for its
second annual End User Summit. The Summit is a unique opportunity for Google joins Open Screen
corporate end users to learn and interact with leaders from within the Linux Project
community. It will take place on November 9-10, 2009 at the Hyatt Jersey City on Google has joined Adobe’s Open
the Hudson (in New Jersey, USA). “In its second year, the Summit will facilitate Screen Project [openscreenproject.
collaboration among Linux community members who, until recently, did not org], an initiative established a year
have the opportunity to discuss, face-to-face, the most pressing new usage and a half ago to help developers
models and demands facing the Linux platform,” said Jim Zemlin, executive design content more easily for the
director at The Linux Foundation. The Summit is sponsored by IBM and Intel Web across multiple screens, using
and is by invitation only. To request for an invitation, please visit the Summit the Flash platform.
website [http://events.linuxfoundation.org/events/end-user-summit]. According to Google, “We’ve
always believed that open platforms
Mickos to EU: Oracle’s Sun takeover not ‘anti-competitive’ lead to greater innovation on the Web,
MySQL’s former CEO, Marten Mickos, is sending a heartfelt plea to the European and we see participating in the Open
Union to wave through Oracle’s takeover of Sun Microsystems. Mickos left Screen Project as another step in that
MySQL earlier this year—just over a year after Sun bought his open source direction. We’re excited to continue
database outfit—after apparently becoming frustrated with the bureaucracy working with the teams at Adobe on
at Sun. With Oracle’s takeover of Sun—and the prospect of Larry Ellison killing pushing the Web forward, and to see
Mickos’ open source baby – industry watchers might have expected the deal where the next generation of Web
to further fuel his ire. Instead, Mickos has written to the EU competition development will take us.”
commissioner, Neelie Kroes, to say that while the EU was The project includes close to 50
absolutely right to launch an investigation into the deal, it industry leaders working together
should give the takeover the ‘OK’ as quickly as possible. Every to provide a consistent runtime
day the EU holds up the deal, he argues, actually reduces environment across mobile phones,
competition in the market as Sun’s business withers, and desktops and other consumer
investment in ‘open source ventures’ slows down. electronic devices.

16  |  NOVEMBER 2009  |  LINUX For You  |  www.LinuxForU.com

FOSS Bytes
Red Hat gives open source perspective in Bilski case
Red Hat has filed an amicus brief with the US Supreme Court. In the brief, the Developing employee-
company explains the practical problems of software patents to developers. The savvy software gets Om
brief, filed in the Bilski case, asks the Supreme Court to adopt the lower court’s Logistics Peace Award
machine-or-transformation test and to make clear that it excludes software World Without Wars has awarded
from patentability. The Bilski case involves the standard for S K Goel, vice president, IT, Om
patenting a process. The case concerns a business method Logistics Ltd, with the inaugural
patent, but involves many of the same issues as software Peace Award for promoting
patents. “Red Hat continues its commitment to the free and technologies that struggle against
open source software community by taking a strong position violence (monopolies). Goel has
against bad software patents,” said Rob Tiller, vice president been conferred this award for
and assistant general counsel, IP for Red Hat. “Our patent developing Linux software and
system is supposed to foster innovation, but for open source and software in making it employee savvy. The
general, it does the opposite. Software patents form a minefield that slows and World March, initiated by World
discourages software innovation. The Bilski case presents a great opportunity Without Wars—an international
for the Supreme Court to rectify this problem.” organisation launched by the
Humanist Movement--began in
Ingres 9.3 offers easy migration from other databases New Zealand on October 2, 2009.
Ingres Corporation has launched Ingres Database 9.3 that offers easy migration It will conclude in the Andes
from MySQL, as well as from proprietary databases such as Oracle, MS SQL Mountains (Punta de Vacas,
Server, and Sybase. In this release, Ingres adds features commonly used in Aconcagua, Argentina) on January
applications written for MySQL and Oracle to enable a smooth migration to 2, 2010, after covering more than 90
Ingres. These features include improved accessibility of table procedures from countries around the globe.
within the query and the support of positional parameter notations that make
database procedure invocation more flexible. MIPS joins Open
Ingres Database 9.3 also provides support for PAM, which enables the Handset Alliance
database to support more authentication mechanisms than previous versions. MIPS Technologies, a provider of
The new version adds the ability to automatically start multiple Data Access processor architectures and cores,
Servers to improve scalability in environments where large numbers of .Net and has announced that it has joined
JDBC applications are connecting to Ingres. Ingres Database 9.3 is available for the Open Handset Alliance, a
download at http://esd.ingres.com. group of more than 45 technology
and mobile companies working
Digital Waves introduces T-Platforms’ HPC Solutions to offer consumers a richer, less
Bangalore-based IT solutions company Digital Waves and Russian expensive, and better
supercomputer firm T-Platforms have inked a deal to “jointly offer high- mobile experience.
performance computational clustering solutions to the Indian market.” The As a member, MIPS
new products available in India include the blade systems T-Blade 1.1 and Technologies will work
T-Blade 2.0, PeakCell S server based on 9-core PowerXCell processors, and with others to contribute
ClusterX software for high-performance computing systems. The to the continued
T-Blade 1.1 system chassis incorporates the computing power development and success
of 20 quad-core Intel Xeon 55xx (‘Nehalem’) or six-core AMD of the Android platform.
Opteron 24xx (‘Istanbul’) processors in a compact 5U enclosure, It's already an active contributor
to give up to 9.98 TFlops of peak performance in a standard 42U to Android development, recently
rack. T-Blade 2.0 is the second generation of T-Platforms blade making its source code optimised
platforms designed for building compute systems with a Petascale level of for the MIPS architecture, publicly
performance. It provides peak performance of up to 3TFlops in a 7U enclosure available. As part of its relationship
and up to 18TFlops in a standard 42U rack. The PeakCell S with the Open Handset Alliance,
server is based on the PowerXCell 8i 9-core processor. The MIPS will contribute the ‘Android
server has a peak performance of 204.8 GFlops for double on MIPS’ code to the Android
precision operations and 409.6 GFlops for single precision Open Source Project.
operations, packed in a convenient 1U form factor.

18  |  NOVEMBER 2009  |  LINUX For You  |  www.LinuxForU.com

FOSS Bytes
New open source
router from NETGEAR
NETGEAR has launched the
RangeMax Wireless-N Gigabit
Router with USB, which
is also designed to serve
as an open source Linux
platform supporting a wide
variety of applications. The
open source Linux-based
firmware—DD-WRT,
OpenWRT and Tomato—are also
available on the WNR3500L router,
making it easier for users to develop
a wide variety of applications.
RangeMax Wireless-N Gigabit
Router with USB features a 480MHz
MIPS 74K CPU core with embedded
hardware acceleration and
incorporates 8 MB of Flash memory
and 64 MB of RAM. It features five
10/100/1000 (one WAN port and
four LAN) Ethernet ports with auto-
sensing technology, with WAN to
LAN speeds in excess of 350 MBps.
Host of new features in
Parsix GNU/Linux 3.0
A new version of Parsix GNU/Linux
has been released in October.
Version 3.0, a.k.a ‘Kev’, brings a
vast number of new features like:
GNOME 2.26.3, kernel 2.6.29.6
with extra patches and drivers,
ext4 FS and GRUB 2, AuFS and
UnionFS support, SquashFS+LZMA
compression for live-CD and lots of
updated packages like
GNU Iceweasel 3.5.3,
OpenOffice.org 3.1.1,
Compiz-Fusion
0.8.2, etc. Due to
vast number of
changes and new
default features in
this version, the project has
been recommended for a CD-ROM
update mode installation. To know
more about Parsix, visit parsix.org.
20  |  NOVEMBER 2009  |  LINUX For You  |  www.LinuxForU.com
Acer launches Liquid, with the
Snapdragon processor
Finally, Acer has also come out with an
Android phone that’s based on Qualcomm’s
Snapdragon processor. It’s been christened Acer
Liquid. Liquid’s bells and whistles include a WVGA
touchscreen, Android 1.6, HSPA 3G, along with Wi-fi, GPS,
Bluetooth and a 5 mega-pixel camera.
The latest Android kid on the block is reported to feature improved power
management, a camera with geo-tagging, ISO, self-timer options, and accelerated
auto-focus. And of course, keeping pace with the latest trends, it will also support
multimedia, Web browsing, social media integration and video streaming. Liquid
will sport a completely revamped user interface, atop Android 1.6. The UI also
debuts ‘Spinlets’—apps for streaming music and video that can be shared via
Web-posting and e-mails. Unfortunately, the pricing has not been announced yet.
RH, MS expand virtualisation interoperability options
Red Hat has announced that customers can now deploy fully-supported
virtualisation environments that combine Microsoft Windows Server and Red
Hat Enterprise Linux. In response to customer demand for interoperability
in their IT environments, Red Hat and Microsoft have completed testing and
validation for mutual customers using server virtualisation. Joint support for
these configurations from Red Hat and Microsoft is available now.
Customers can now deploy tested and supported virtualised Red Hat and
Microsoft solutions. The completed certifications include: validation of Red Hat
Enterprise Linux 5.4, using the KVM hypervisor, with Windows Server 2003,
2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2 guests; and certification of Windows Server
2008 Hyper-V, Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V
and the Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 host with Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5.2, 5.3 and 5.4 guests.
Additionally, Microsoft products certified on Windows Server and Red Hat
products certified on Red Hat Enterprise Linux are also supported in these
heterogeneous virtualised environments.
IDA official Indian distributor of Beagle Board and NanoNote
IDA Systems is now the official India distributor of the Beagle Board platform.
The Beagle Board is a low-cost, fan-less single-board computer based on Texas
Instruments’ OMAP35x processors featuring the ARM Cortex-A8 core with all of
the expandability of today’s desktop machines, but without the bulk, expense or
noise. The Beagle Board (C3) is priced at Rs 8,999.
In addition, IDA Systems is now bringing to
India the ‘copy left’ ideology-based NanoNote mini
computer. The Ben NanoNote is a small form-factor
computing device. It sports a 336 MHz processor,
2GB of Flash memory, a microSD slot, a head phone
jack, a USB device and 850mAh Li-ion battery. It
boots Linux out of the box and also boots over USB.
It’s targeted at developers who see the promise of
open hardware. The Ben NanoNote is priced at Rs
9,000. For pre-orders till November end 2009, it can
be availed for Rs 6,000.
 Review  |  For U & Me

“ I wanna be

your
Hero
ab by” says HTC Sense!

HTC Hero continues to maintain HTC’s leadership in cutting-edge design. It introduces a more
natural way for you to reach out to people as well as access all your important information, by
following how you communicate and live your life. HTC Sense is a distinct experience created
to make HTC phones simpler to use, leaving users saying, “It just makes sense!”

www.LinuxForU.com  |  LINUX For You  |  NOVEMBER 2009  |  21

For U & Me  |  Review ______________________________________________________________________________________________________
T
here was excitement in
the air, tension around
the Adam’s apple.
iPhone had already
swept the touch-screen market with
its brand-new OS, zippy UI and the
Safari browser that could turn every
website into a sex bomb. Microsoft
got another jolt when Google decided
to take up the Linux kernel and build
a mobile OS on top. And then HTC
launched the G1. Alas! Nobody seemed
to be interested in paying $699 for a
phone that ran an open source OS
and depended on freelance developers
for the apps. Neither could HTC
themselves justify the price.
It was through this dynamic time
that HTC also launched its most
popular touch-screen brand, one
version after another. First there was
HTC Touch, followed by the Touch
Diamond, Touch Pro, Diamond HD
and many
Figure 1: HTC Sense—enhanced Android experience
22  |  NOVEMBER 2009  |  LINUX For You  |  www.LinuxForU.com
more. What made these phones
popular was their proprietary
TouchFlo user interface. When HTC's
other Android-based phones, the
G2 and Magic, also got a lukewarm
response, it decided to fuse its award-
winning combination with Android,
and thus was born the HTC Sense.
HTC Sense
HTC Sense is a user experience
that’s based on the TouchFlo 3D
user interface, developed by HTC
for mobile devices running Google
Android. The Sense ‘experience’ is
not, as it has often been described, a
UI as such. Sense is just a “…design
experience, an architecture that is
all about how people use the device,
making their content personal to how
they use the device.” HTC Hero is the
first phone that shipped with HTC
Sense. With its distinct design and
powerful capabilities fully integrated
with Sense, Hero introduces a unique
blend of form and function that takes
Android to new heights. HTC Sense
is focused on putting people at the
centre, by making your phone work in
a more simple and natural way.
The Hero
It was written that a great Hero
would rise from the East. He
would be clothed in the sun and
his unique user-interface would
redefine the user experience
for countless fans of social
networking, and His Majesty
would reign over all Android
phones forever. That Hero is
here, and he’s on Airtel.
The phone was launched
in September 2009, in India.
It is the first Android device
to support Adobe Flash, is
HTC's first phone that’s
available worldwide,
and is the first Android
phone to host HTC's
proprietary software,
the widgets, add-ons
and TouchFlo 3D
elements. Smartphone
fans seem to agree
that the company
Figure 2: The Rear Side
has finally delivered what has been
missing in the world of Android,
namely, a polished and attractive
device (polished enough to go head-
to-head with the iPhone) with an open
source heart.
“What’s in the box?”
We received the Hero in a white
rectangular box that contained the
following:
 The HTC Hero
 A 1350 mAh battery
 A 128 MB Micro SD memory card
 A data cable that can be
transformed into a ninja charger (a
la the Auto Bots and Decepticons).
Form factor
The very moment you lay your eyes
on the phone, you know that it's a
product of sheer evolution. While all
the HTC Android phones are designed
the same, the sleek curve (known as
‘the chin’) right at the bottom seems to
be an ergonomic, inviting design. No
other mobile manufacturing company
offers such quirky contours.
Housed on the front is the earpiece,
covered by a fine grill. Right next to it is
the service LED (glows red when the
phone is being charged or is connected
to a PC, and green when the battery is
fully charged) and ambient light sensor
that handles the display's backlight.
Hero is the first phone that has a fused
curved casing, almost-invisible volume
rocker, trackball, touch-screen and
matte plastic all at the same time. The
bevelled edges along the back makes
the handset sit comfortably in the hand.
The plastic material that covers it
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________ Review   |  For U & Me

Specifications
Processor Qualcomm MSM7200A, 528 MHz
Operating system Android
Memory 512 MB (ROM)
288 MB (RAM)
Dimensions 112 x 56.2 x 14.35 mm (4.41 x 2.21 x 0.57 inches)
Weight 135 grams (with battery)
Display 3.2-inch TFT-LCD capacitive touch-sensitive screen with
320x480 HVGA resolution
User interface HTC Sense
Input method Multi-touch screen, trackball
Network  HSPA/WCDMA - 900/2100 MHz (upto 2 Mbps up-link and

7.2 Mbps down-link speeds)

 Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE (850/900/1800/1900 MHz)

Device Control  Touch UI

 The Home screen
 Trackball (for both navigation and selection)

GPS Internal GPS

Connectivity  Bluetooth 2.0 with Enhanced Data Rate

 A2DP for wireless stereo headsets

 Wireless: IEEE 802.11 b/g

 GPRS (Class 10), EDGE (Class 10), HSDPA (7.2 Mbps)

 HTC ExtUSB (11-pin mini-USB 2.0 and audio jack in one)

 3.5 mm audio jack

Camera 5.0 mega-pixel colour camera with auto (touch) focus

Audio formats MP3, AAC(AAC, AAC+, AAC-LC), AMR-NB, WAV, MIDI
Video formats MPEG-4, H.263, H.264 and Windows Media Video 9
Battery Rechargeable Lithium-ion (1350 mAh)
Expansion slot microSD memory card (SD 2.0 compatible)
Sensors Accelerometers, Ambient light sensor
Browser HTML
Notable features  HTC Sense UI
 Menu Structure
 G-Sensor

 Digital compass

 Photo geo-tagging

 Dedicated search key

 HTC Sense quick profile switcher

is extremely smooth, elegant and not Controls

prone to wear and tear, smudges and
finger prints. The memory card socket
(microSD and microSDHC) is found
on the left-hand side, but in order to
swap cards you'll need to remove the
back cover first. Thankfully, though,
you won't have to turn the Hero off.
The SIM-card bed is located right
under the battery and utilises a couple
of runners for holding the card. There
is also a lanyard eyelet located right on
the battery cover.
The very first set of buttons that will
catch your fancy are the little oval
ones right on Hero's chin. They are
Call/Send, Home (brings up the task
manager if kept pressed), Menu and
End. Below them reside the Search
and Back buttons. There is also a
trackball used to jump between the
UI's screens, applications, and to
scroll through pages, text and the  Facebook Widget - alongwith shortcuts
browser's screen. It is very helpful to various apps
when one needs to click on Web

www.LinuxForU.com  |  LINUX For You  |  NOVEMBER 2009  |  23

For U & Me  |  Review ______________________________________________________________________________________________________
Figure 3: 5 megapixel camera - without flash
 The Dial screen, with call history
Figure 4: Volume rocker is intelligently fused in the
phone’s design
links written in minute fonts and
spaced too close together.
The dedicated search button
mostly brings out Google Search.
However, in some apps, it launches
HTC’s inherent search box. At
the top, there is a 3.5 mm jack for
audio, and a slot to open the battery
cover. The bottom exhibits HTC's
trademark ExtUSB socket, for
 Add a new contact charging and data transfer, along
with the microphone. The volume
rocker is to the left of the phone. It
is very slim and mounted flush with
the casing. One good thing is that
like the WinMo devices, the volume
rocker can be used even when the
phone's locked. This is useful since
it enables you to change the volume
level without having to take it out
of your jacket pocket, for instance.
However, since the rocker is at the
same level with the case, it does
become tough to locate, at times.
Sadly, Hero has no dedicated
camera button. The camera needs to
be accessed from an internal menu
and the trackball doubles up as the
 The Facebook App shutter button. There is also a separate
zoom menu. However, you are advised
not to use it since it is only a digital
24  |  NOVEMBER 2009  |  LINUX For You  |  www.LinuxForU.com
Figure 5: The SD card slot is inside the battery cover
Figure 6: Pretty powerful speaker - with the LED
zoom and can be achieved using any
photo editing software.
There are no slots or buttons on
the right.
Display
The display of Hero is a 3.2-inch
capacitive TFT screen (68x45mm) with
480 x 320 pixel resolution (HVGA).
The screen uses a new oleophobic
treatment (similar to the iPhone 3GS),
to make it more touch sensitive and
smudge resistant. Unfortunately, the
screen is a finger print magnet and you
will find yourself rubbing it with your
handkerchief pretty often.
The screen has a wide viewing
angle, with hardly any distortion.
While the colours are very bright,
it gets washed out under direct
sunlight. It is also very responsive to
touch, although still a bit behind the
legendary iPhone. However, we must
keep in mind that Android is typically
designed for resistive displays that
are more suited to a stylus. Yet, the OS
has come a long way in the world of
finger-touch.
Camera
This monster has a 5 mega-pixel
camera with auto-focus. It is placed
at the top part of the rear side. While
the photo shots are really great in
 Review  |  For U & Me

10  Great Apps from the Android Market Place

 Twidroid: This is the best  Bluetooth File Transfer: While HTC Hero does not
Twitter and identi.ca application allow transfer of media files using Bluetooth, this app will
available on the Android Market help you do so. However, it uses a different port (port 29)
Place. It doesn’t just let you to communicate using the Bluetooth protocol.
update your status messages
and reply to others, but also  Qik: This application
allows you to visit their profiles, has been very ‘qik’
follow and unfollow them, to pick up steam and
upload images to the image become one of the
service of your choice, and leading services in live
even customise notifications for video blogging. All you
new tweets, replies and direct The Twitter App need to do is install the
Live stream video for the world to see
messages. app on your mobile,
fire it up, and keep
 iMusic: No doubt, this is the most popular application shooting videos of events. The videos will automatically
on the Market Place! iMusic allows you to get connected get streamed, live, via Qik's network, using your mobile
to the Gnutella file sharing network and actually download service provider's bandwidth. While you will need 3G for
videos, images and songs right onto your Android phone! the streaming to be seamless, it works very smoothly on a
broadband wireless network.
 PicMe: While Android
does not have an inherent  ConnectBot: This application will make every Linux
screenshot-taking app, the enthusiast roar in unison, “I am the power of the Universe!”
developers have come out with ConnectBot actually lets you connect to other machines in
a wonderful application that your network, using ftp or ssh, and then presents you with a
allows you to take screenshots console screen for you to play around. Awesome app, we say!
of the mobile, remotely. All the
phone needs is to be connected  StumbleVideo: While the default YouTube application
to a wireless network and the is more than capable of streaming videos, StumbleVideo
screenshot can be taken by any adds the spice of StumbleUpon to it. Yes, you can actually
computer logged onto the same stumble videos on your Android phone, thumbs-up a video
network. Since HTC Hero does or just keep discovering new ones.
not have any physical keyboard,
there are no keyboard shortcuts
Take screenshots via local
 Phonalyzer: More than
and this seems to be the best way of taking a screenshot. being useful, this is one of
the most amusing mobile
 Netmeter: Not many service providers in India offer phone apps I have ever
unlimited data transfer witnessed. It simply sits in
plans, these days. So, the background and keeps
Netmeter is a great app accumulating statistics
to keep an eye on the about your phone usage.
amount of data you have Then, it presents you with
already transferred on your the information, in the form
network. It gives separate of interesting graphs, like
stats for mobile network ‘Top Callers by Minutes’, ‘Top
traffic and wireless traffic. Callers by Calls’, ‘Missed vs
What’s more, it will also Regular Calls’, ‘Call Length
Distribution’, etc. Analyses your calling habits
point out the CPU load
utilised by each of the
processes running on your  Compass: While this
phone, so that you can is primarily a fun app, it has the potential to turn into
identify the ones gorging something very useful if you are one of those who often
on the bandwidth and take Stay updated on your data usage get off the beaten track. What helps the phone navigate
appropriate action. are the extra-sensitive accelerometers housed within it.

www.LinuxForU.com  |  LINUX For You  |  NOVEMBER 2009  |  25

For U & Me  |  Review ______________________________________________________________________________________________________
 Android Market Place
 Various applications at the Market Place
 Twidroid - Best Twitter app for Android
26  |  NOVEMBER 2009  |  LINUX For You  |  www.LinuxForU.com
sunlight, it is pretty useless under
low lighting conditions, thanks to
the lack of a flash and low sensitivity.
Moreover, the camera lens has no
cover glass, thus making the lens slot
a deadly magnet for dust.
Battery
Personally, for an Internet junkie
like me, 1350mAh of juice is too
little to even last a day. After about
30 minutes of YouTube, 30 Twitter
updates, 10 FB updates, around 60
minutes of phone calls, 50 e-mail
messages, 10 camera shots and 10
hours of Wi-Fi, the phone hardly
lasted 20 hours. Ideally, I would have
liked it to last for a minimum of 30
hours. However, the fact that I can
charge the phone using the USB cord,
never made me cry for battery power.
Performance
HTC Hero has a Qualcomm processor
that causes the graphic transitions
to stutter a bit and results in screen
rotations that feel dangerously
uncomfortable. Yet, we found the
Hero to be stable, and it rarely hung or
crashed. But the occasional lag could
get annoying when you're using the
phone every day. Moreover, the OS still
seems to be a little unstable and asks
us to force the closure of a certain htc.
android.provider task quite frequently.
User experience
It is the home screen of HTC Hero
that is unique among phones. There
are seven home screens that you
Figure 7: The innards of HTC Hero - in its full glory
can swap with the swipe of a finger,
and you can add a range of widgets
and shortcuts, as well as customise
the wallpaper. This feature definitely
gives you the feel of using multiple
desktops on your computer.
The widgets make life so much
more exciting with HTC Hero. While
the widgets are homologous to
Android, there are a host of them
developed by HTC. What's more, if
you find yourself limited, you can
always browse at Android's Market
Place and choose between thousands
of free apps to download and use.
Surfing the Web on the Hero is
a pleasure. Thanks to its accurate
browser, which includes Flash support,
you won't miss a single whizzy ad.
Moreover, the multi-touch capability of
the capacitive screen helps you zoom
in and out of the Web pages, images
and text really fast.
We also loved the 'Mount' feature
of the phone that allows you to use the
mobile's memory card as a USB drive.
Social network in your pants!
Hero is very tightly integrated with
your Gmail, Facebook and Twitter
contacts and makes sure you never
miss 'updates' from your friends.
The customised OS also pulls in
your Facebook and Flickr photo
albums and shows them alongside
your contacts' info. If you click on a
contact, it lists out not just the phone
numbers, addresses and birthdays but
also your friend’s photos and updates
on Twitter, Facebook and Flickr.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________ Review
Why should I buy the HTC Hero?
1. It's got the heart of Linux! Yes,
Android being open source, there
will never be a dearth of third-party
applications to power the phone.
2. The Sense UI and the touch-screen
QWERTY keyboard are the best in
the business.
3. The hardware design is very risque
and succeeds in catching a lot of
attention (a la ‘the chin’).
Should I give HTC Hero a pass?
1. Although it has a 5 mega-pixel
camera, the shutter is extremely
slow and highly sensitive.
Moreover, the absence of a flash
renders the powerful camera
absolutely useless.
2. While the operating system is
open source and most of the
applications are developed by
freelance developers, this phone
can hardly justify its price tag.
3. The display gets washed out
under direct sunlight.
4. It has no radio and no proximity
sensor to switch off the display
once the phone is near the ear.
5. The GPS takes a long time to get
a satellite lock.
Whether HTC plans to support other
social networks too, isn't clear as yet.
Text input
HTC Hero has an on-screen keyboard
with different layouts—the traditional
phone keypad, Compact QWERTY
and QWERTY. It has a simulated
haptic-forced feedback every time you
hit a key. HTC has built its own touch
keyboard from the ground up. The
keyboard also has a text prediction
algorithm that is almost 98 per cent
accurate in daily use and 100 per cent
accurate if you type only English words.
  |  For U & Me
4. Android's default browser (it's not
Chrome, at least not yet) is based on
Webkit, is dizzying fast and renders
Web pages in a very customised and
easy-to-use layout.
5. Tight integration with Google
accounts makes sure you carry your
information everywhere you go, be
it the calendar entries, contacts,
tasks list or even the RSS feeds.
However, it is advisable to run through
the training mode to help it learn your  Teeter - A fun game that uses Hero’s
particular tapping quirks. It's probably extra-sensitive accelerometers
the best touchscreen typing experience
I've ever encountered. It never lags
behind. I am a BlackBerry addict
myself and yet, Hero did not make me
miss BB's physical keyboard. The good
news is: Hero supports the cut-copy-
paste drill too.
On the whole, HTC Hero is a phone
for both casual and business users.
Since it gets synced to MS Exchange
Server too, getting your e-mails will
never be an issue. It is also one of the
very few phones that support 'over the
air' updates. The music player is also
very competent, unless compared to
the iPhone or Sony's Walkman Series
phones. The touch UI is very snappy.  The GMail App for Android
However, what takes the cake is its
strong integration with social networks,
intuitive user interface and extremely
rich Market Place that houses any app
that one might ever need.
However, a price tag of Rs 32,000
(Rs 35,000 in Maharashtra) is a bit
too steep for the Indian market. If it
ever drops to the range of Rs 25,000-
Rs 28000, it should be the ideal
phone to buy! 
By: Sayantan Pal
An avid Twitter user and a social media
enthusiast, the author is a passionate
blogger and a professional gamer
too. He also feels compelled to be
opinionated about anything that comes
his way, be it Linux distributions, our
marketing strategies, table etiquettes or  GTalk for Android
even the fabled Ramsay movies!
www.LinuxForU.com  |  LINUX For You  |  NOVEMBER 2009  |  27
 For U & Me  |  How To _______________________________________________________________________________________________
Super, Simple
S e c ur i t y - u s e secur
to
easy- f mind.
’re s ome a c e o
Here u that pe
o
give y
S
ecurity and privacy are two things
about which everyone—from
netbook owners to server
administrators—is concerned.
After all, it is one of the main reasons why
people switch over to Linux and other FLOSS
software. But once they do switch over, they
find it to be a very daunting task to actually get
started with encrypting hard drive partitions,
ensuring privacy, etc. Many people are scared
of the terminal, the cryptic commands and the
terminology that they need to get familiar with
in order to secure themselves.
Well, if you are new to all this, relax. In
this article we will look at ways of securely
performing some of the most common tasks
on our computers; and do so in a very simple
and user-friendly manner.
Home directory encryption
Most of you probably know about the
possibility of encrypting your data to make
it secure. But I’m sure only a few of you
might actually use this feature on your
system. The main reason for this might be
the lack of know-how or the negative impact
on performance due to encryption and
decryption of the entire system.
28  |  NOVEMBER 2009  |  LINUX For You  |  www.LinuxForU.com
ity tips and t
ools that c
an
The recently-released Ubuntu 9.10,
Karmic Koala, solves both these problems
with a very nifty feature—a per-user home
directory encryption. While home directory
encryption was present in the past few
versions of Ubuntu, it was never this simple
to set up. This feature uses the eCryptfs
cryptographic filesystem. The fact that
the encryption is done only for the home
directory and not the entire filesystem,
means that it encrypts the data that is most
important to you, while causing minimum
degradation in performance. Some estimate
the performance loss to be around 5 per cent.
How it works is extremely simple. You
can set it up during installation from the GUI
installer itself. Figure 1 shows the steps in the
installation process. Once set up, whenever we
boot the computer and log in, the directory is
unlocked and we can use it just as we would
normally use our home directory. It must also
be noted that if you enable home directory
encryption, then encrypted swap is also set up
from this release onwards.
Now, some of you might be wondering
how secure this encryption really is. Well,
Dustin Kirkland (who developed this feature)
says that while this might not be the best
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________
solution to secure national secrets, it’s mainly intended to
prevent criminals from getting access to, say, your credit
card information off your stolen laptop. So having this
feature in the age of portable devices like netbooks, MIDs,
etc, is certainly a huge boon.
IM conversation encryption
Most of us use instant messaging clients these days. We
usually only chat with friends and relatives, so we don’t
realise the need to secure and encrypt our instant messages.
But as the saying goes, “Better safe than sorry.” So we should
take steps to secure our IM chats—at least the somewhat-
important conversations. And this is where OTR comes into
the picture.
OTR (Off-the-Record) messaging helps us encrypt
our conversations in a very simple manner. While it does
provide most of the features offered by other similar
protocols, like authentication and encryption, what makes
it stand out is deniability. In fact, one of the primary goals
behind OTR was to have deniability, much like in real-life
conversations. So if you use OTR, the messages sent by you
have no digital signature. Hence, someone can forge the
identity of anyone else, once the conversation is over. You
can deny your participation in the conversation. But when
the conversation is on, we can be sure of the other person’s
identity. Another reason why OTR shines is that it is not
tied to any single protocol. It’s just that the users on both
the ends must have clients that support OTR.
How To  |  For U & Me
Many IM clients support OTR, either natively or by
using a plug-in. On Linux, both our favourite IM clients,
Pidgin and Kopete, support OTR. To use OTR in Pidgin,
enable the ‘Off-the-Record Messaging’ plug-in under
Tools→Plugins. Then, in its configuration menu, click
‘Generate for each account’ along with which OTR is to
be used. Then open a chat window using the account on
which OTR is enabled. A new option will be available in
the window as shown in Figure 2. Here, we can choose
whether we want to set the conversation to ‘Private’ or not.
And if the person on the other side also has OTR support,
then we are all set to go.
Incidentally, developers of Empathy, which is now the
default IM client in the latest versions of Ubuntu, Fedora and
most other distributions, are not too impressed with OTR.
They plan on implementing XMPP end-to-end encryption.
Though an OTR implementation is also being worked upon,
primarily to have compatibility with other OTR users.
Internet browsing security
While these days, Internet surfing is probably the primary
activity on our computing devices, we hardly ever take
steps to protect our privacy and security on the Web. One
of the first things that comes to mind when thinking about
surfing with privacy, is the use of proxy servers.
Some of the proxy servers do help in surfing the Web
securely and, to some extent, anonymously. But the main
problem with using these kinds of proxy servers is that they
www.LinuxForU.com  |  LINUX For You  |  NOVEMBER 2009  |  29
For U & Me  |  How To ______________________________________________________________________________________________________
Figure 1: Setting a password to decrypt the home directory
often provide very slow
connections, especially
the free ones.
To overcome
this problem, a
Firefox plug-in called
FoxyProxy is available.
Essentially, FoxyProxy
enables us to route
certain sites through
the proxy server,
whereas the other
sites will be loaded
Figure 2: Pidgin chat window with OTR enabled without using the
proxy server. Hence,
the negative effect on our browsing is minimal. We can set
up which proxy server is to be used for which sites, and
governed by which rules, white lists, etc.
FoxyProxy is also used to access websites that are
region-locked, for example, www.hulu.com. One must
remember that the level of anonymity gained in this
process is essentially dependent on the proxy server that is
used. While some proxy servers (mostly paid for) do offer
complete anonymity, they are never really 100 per cent
reliable. In fact, one of the most secure ways to surf is to use
FoxyProxy along with the Tor network. The best method
to set this up is explained on the FoxyProxy FAQ at http://
foxyproxy.mozdev.org/faq.html.
Another aspect of browsing security involves surfing
while leaving virtually no trace of the browsing activity
on the client PC. The latest version of Firefox and Chrome
both provide a ‘Private Browsing’ mode, using which no
Web history, form history, or cookies are saved on the
client machines—essentially, it tries to avoid leaving any
traces of your Internet activity on the client machines.
Available under the Tools menu in Firefox, this mode is
very useful when you use the Internet for online banking
and other e-commerce activities. One must remember that
while surfing in this mode, it is possible that your ISP or
any hacker can monitor the connection.
30  |  NOVEMBER 2009  |  LINUX For You  |  www.LinuxForU.com
Computer auto-locking
This is definitely one of the coolest ways to increase
the security of your system. Usually, in large offices,
employees lock their computers whenever they
have to step out of their seats. Doing this again and
again surely gets frustrating. But now, using software
called BlueProximity, you can set your computer to
automatically lock/unlock depending on your distance
from the computer. You can do this if your computer
is Bluetooth-enabled and you have a cell phone with
Bluetooth capabilites.
Once BlueProximity is set up, it will automatically
detect the approximate distance between the cell phone
and the computer, and lock the screen once you move
away. And when you come back near the computer, it
gets unlocked. This software is really a boon for people
who are tired of typing their passwords again and again.
BlueProximity can also be set up to run any other shell
command that you want. Hence, you can make it turn off
the monitor, change the song that is playing or do just
about anything that you can imagine.
KeePass password safe
Anyone who knows a thing or two about security will
agree that having the same password for multiple
sites and applications is a huge security hazard. One
of the main reasons why we use the same password
everywhere is because it’s too difficult to remember
different passwords, while keeping them cryptic enough.
So to overcome these problems, the best way is to use a
password manager.
One of the best ones that I recommend is KeePass, a
cross-platform, open source password manager. You can
use it to store all the passwords in its database. Then you
have to remember just the master password for KeePass
and you can access all the other information.
The developers of KeePass have taken a lot of trouble
to make it as secure as possible, employing various
advanced algorithms. It is completely portable and
can be used from a USB disk also. It even has features
that can prevent a key logger from deciphering the
passwords.
This just about sums up how to secure most of your
common Internet-linked activities in a user-friendly
manner. Anyone trying out these tips must remember
that 100 per cent security is possible only in theory. There
is no method that can give you complete security. But for
most practical purposes, the methods suggested in this
article should be good enough. If you too have any similar
tips, do share them with us. 
By: Praveen Thirukonda
The author is a third year computer engineering student who
loves playing around with FLOSS. He is a huge sci-fi movie buff
and also enjoys playing badminton.
 Securing your Business

@
South Asia’s largest ICT event

Cloud Computing
International Exhibition & Conference
Pragati Maidan, New Delhi, India
23-25 March 2010 Clickjacking

Supports Data Theft

IP Surveillance
Department of Telecommunications
Ministry of Communications & Information Technology
Virtualisation
Government of India

Info Security

Department of Information Technology

Ministry of Communications & Information Technology
Government of India

Suppporting Journal Certified by

Organiser

Vipul Mehra, General Manager, vipulm@eigroup.in

Tel: +91 11 4279 5000 / 5030 M: +91 99102 04131 www.convergenceindia.org
For U & Me  |  Insight _______________________________________________________________________________________________

for
Th irst
FOSS b Market!
the Jo
at

With FOSS growing by leaps and bounds because of the supportive IT

landscape, there is a hard-to-quench thirst for FOSS experts. So don those FOSS
training boots to climb higher up the career graph!

A
  decade ago, Novell Netware was
a synonym for networks just
like Windows was for operating
systems. Expressions like “I have
Netware, but I am not too sure of whether
I have a network,” weren’t unheard of. It
was a monopoly then. Today, FOSS/Linux
has placed freedom of choice back into the
hands of companies using technology. And
the recent recession has helped to change
the general perception about FOSS. The
result is a heavy demand for FOSS experts
from independent software vendors, SMEs,
the government, and technology-oriented
companies in the embedded device, mobile
and netbook markets.
Elaborating on the demand for FOSS
experts across India, Alok Srivastava,
chairman, Network Nuts, a Delhi-based IT
training company, says: “During the last
one year, I have seen tremendous growth in
the number of people/companies coming
for FOSS training. We have enrolled many
who’ve been given a deadline of one month
to get themselves trained on the Linux
server because the company cannot afford
to buy a Windows/Solaris box. The 50-55
per cent growth that the FOSS training
sector saw last year speaks loud and clear
of the growing demand for FOSS experts.”
Advantage FOSS
But before taking the FOSS plunge, analysis
of whether FOSS truly gives your career
the much-needed push, is essential.
Jaijit Bhattacharya, country director,
government strategy, Sun Microsystems,
says: “Organisations are getting smarter

32  |  NOVEMBER 2009  |  LINUX For You  |  www.LinuxForU.com

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________ Insight
Workflow Content
Management E Business Analytics
Sugar CRM Joomla Interchange Pentaho
Compiere Drupal OFBiz JasperSoft
Dot Project Alfresco PHP Cart Intalio BPMS
Zimbra EZ Publish Magento
Open Bravo Moodle
Figure 1: FOSS applications for which trained professionals are in demand
[Courtesy: OSSCube]
by the day and will not spend unnecessarily on
proprietary software when better quality FOSS
is available and readily downloadable from the
Internet. FOSS professionals will be the ones enabling
organisations benefit from the cost savings provided.”
Adding to this view, Rajesh Chhikara, director
of the Institute of Open Source, and head of HR,
EarlySail Software, says: “It’s very simple—if you need
to be different from the crowd then you have to learn
technology that you have not learnt in college and the
best way is to opt for open source technologies. Open
source technologies guarantee that you leap ahead of
the crowd.”
With an increasing number of businesses lowering
internal costs using FOSS, FOSS experts are sure to play
an integral part in the process. “Trained and certified
FOSS IT professionals can help the organisation take the
right decision and this increases their chances to rise
up the corporate ladder, faster,” testifies Mitul Limbani,
founder and CEO, Enterux Solutions.
Further, expertise in FOSS is bound to help you
score over your proprietary software counterparts.
“The ‘thinking horizon’ of a FOSS expert is wider
than that of a proprietary software expert. FOSS
experts deal with a lot of logical and environment
compatibility challenges that makes them naturally
more dynamic. Further, they are more proficient in
building Web- and mobile-based applications than
proprietary software experts,” says Sonali Minocha,
director, training, OSSCube. “The confidence to tweak
and tune with the open source product gives FOSS
experts a competitive edge over proprietary software
experts as they can customise software as per one’s
need and at a cheaper cost,” says Shankar Iyer, director,
services, Red Hat. FOSS experts also have the benefit
of support from a much larger online community for
any problem that crops up.
The skillsets in demand
Thus, every sector, whether it is Web development
or product development; human resources, financial
applications or charting analysis, is yearning for open
  |  For U & Me
ITSM Communication
Hungry kya, for FOSS experts?
The recession-led cutback on IT spends has
ZenOSS Asterisk
given a huge boost to the demand for FOSS
Nagios Jabber experts. That, coupled with changes in the IT
landscape like independent software vendors
dPresence drifting towards open source, SMEs plugging into FOSS
sockets, and the reliance on FOSS in the embedded device,
mobile and netbook space, has further fostered the hunger
for FOSS experts. “Most SMEs, as well as major enterprises
across the globe, have reduced IT spending during the
recession. Further, clients have been asking the software
development companies to develop the required solutions
on open source,” says Gopal S, CEO, Nace Solutions.
The embedded device space, especially related to
mobiles and netbooks, has contributed to the demand for
FOSS experts. “Acer uses the Moblin OS in its netbooks,
so does BenQ’s new S6 MID. There is a lot of FOSS
development in the Blackberry area, like the GPS logger,
which can help you log GPS plots every second. Now, open
source Telnet/SSH clients are available for mobile devices
also. This has resulted in the demand for professionals to
be trained in open source technologies to help this industry
make better products, cheaper and faster,” explains Rajesh
Chhikara, director of the Institute of Open Source, and head
of HR, EarlySail Software.
Talking about other catalysts fuelling the demand
for FOSS experts, Sonali Minocha, director, training,
OSSCube, says: “Today, mobile and Web application
technologies are heavily FOSS focused. The enterprise-
class FOSS applications available in the market too are
giving good competition to the proprietary software
companies. Lastly, governments worldwide have passed
legislations or given preference to open source, which
has been a huge boost to FOSS.”
The maturing FOSS industry, too, has contributed to the
growth of FOSS and the subsequent demand for experts.
“The increasing awareness of FOSS and better availability
of systems administrators who have knowledge of FOSS,
has led to more companies adopting it. This has caused
a spurt in demand for FOSS experts,” says J A Bhavsar,
group head, ITM Business School. Adding to this, Satish
Gopinath, proprietor, Integer Education, says: “There is a
clear movement towards FOSS among the IT community.
The movement has been fostered by a general maturing of
FOSS products and the availability of support.”
source experts. But for a smooth take off of your FOSS
career, it is important to first have the skillsets in demand.
A FOSS professional can basically follow one of the
following two paths—development or administration.
“Professionals with expertise in security dataware housing,
MySQL DBA and FOSS-based infrastructure management
software; certified FOSS professionals, Zend Framework/
Symfony Framework engineers, and Drupal developers
www.LinuxForU.com  |  LINUX For You  |  NOVEMBER 2009  |  33
For U & Me  |  Insight ______________________________________________________________________________________________________

are the kind of FOSS professionals

Pick and choose your programme! in demand,” says Minocha. Thus,
But how does one choose an appropriate programme. The key lies in choosing the LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL
right institute and course. Some of the options available are: and PHP), LARM (Linux, Apache,
Ruby on Rails and MySQL), JAVA,
Enterux Solutions systems administrator courses like
Enterux Solutions offers courses on Asterisk. The advanced five-day course for the RHCE, SUSE; Asterisk for VOIP
more experienced Asterisk user will help the candidate learn to create advanced dial services, and JBOSS for application
plans and create innovative telephony solutions by using the features of Asterisk. server are the beneficial skillsets  
It is a combination of both lectures and lab work, designed to give students both to acquire.
the theory behind the concepts, and the hands-on experience to effectively deploy
Asterisk-based solutions. Further details at: www.enterux.com ...for Web development
A reputed freelancing site,
Institute of Open Source Elance.com, claimed that PHP
The mission of the Institute of Open Source is to make rare open source developers are the most in
technologies reach all those who have an interest in software development. The demand with approximately 600
institute offers courses in the PHP core, advanced JAVA and Perl, a basic and projects on the site while O’desk,
advanced course in Linux, different server configuration courses, a certificate course another freelancing site, put the
in Web administration and a certificate course in being a Web master. Further details number of active PHP projects at
at: www.ios.net.in 1,487. PHP skillsets are red hot
Integer Education in the field of Web development.
This is a global training services company, offering courses in Linux and PHP. There “Apart from PHP, a professional
are two variants – basic training for freshers and advanced training for practising should have knowledge of CSS
professionals. Further details at: www.integereducation.com 2.0, JavaScript and HTML,
and Linux in the area of Web
Lynus Academy development,” says Chikkara.
This institute offers courses in systems administration, tech support and DBA support. Gopal S, CEO, Nace Solutions,
It provides training on RHCE, LPI (an international vendor-neutral Linux certificate), adds: “LAMP plays a major role
virtualisation, high availability clusters, troubleshooting, building secure Web applications, in almost all Web development
MySQL/PostgreSQL administration, etc. Further details at: www.lynusacademy.com companies. There is an acute
shortage of LAMP professionals
NACE Solutions across the globe, especially in
NACE Solutions provides open source consultation on migration and cost saving India. LAMP has become more
solutions, open source Web development and software training on Linux, Apache, popular because of its scalable,
MySQL, PHP, CSS, JavaScript, AJAX and Flex. The firm also provides training on low cost, more secure and great
Hibernate, Struts, Spring, and OpenOffice.org. It is the ‘gold training’ and solution performance.” The LAMP stack
provider partner for Novell. Further details at: http://naceedu.com has moved beyond its position
as a Web developer’s creative
Network NUTS
toolkit and become a major
Established in 2003, Network NUTS is a Delhi-based IT training company that
development platform for the
focuses solely on systems administrators and the security track of programs.
enterprise. Long a cornerstone of
Common available courses are RHCE, RHCSS, RHCA and virtualisation. The courses
the Web’s highest volume sites,
are available on a full-time and part-time basis and the duration varies from 32 to
including the likes of Amazon,
100 hours. Further details at: www.networknuts.net
Friendster and Google, LAMP
OSSCube has more recently been used to
India’s only Zend-authorised training partner and authorised MySQL education create major online transactional
centre, OSSCube provides hands-on training on a number of open source software systems for Boeing, Disney,
and technologies. It offers courses in MySQL, Zend, Sugar CRM, Symfony 1.2 and Lufthansa and Sabre.
Doctrine, Ruby on Rails, and Python. Further details at: http://osscube.com
...for systems
Red Hat administrators
Rated as the No 1 vendor in IT training by IDC, Red Hat offers performance-based The demand for FOSS systems
training with hands-on, real world skills that IT professionals need to design, execute, administrators has also
and maintain successful open source infrastructures. It offers courses in systems multiplied with the growth in
administration, JBoss, and development. Further details at: www.redhat.com/training the number of installations or
applications on FOSS/Linux. The

34  |  NOVEMBER 2009  |  LINUX For You  |  www.LinuxForU.com

 In
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For U & Me  |  Insight ______________________________________________________________________________________________________
skillsets needed for systems administration can be
divided into layers, says Srivastava. “The entry-level
skill required by IT companies in the field of server
administration and security is the Red Hat Certified
Engineer (RHCE) level. Those who want to enter
into the highly challenging area of network securities
can acquire the Red Hat Certified Security Specialist
(RHCSS) certification. The top certification available
in India under the administration and security bracket
is Red Hat Certified Architect (RHCA). Those with a
sound knowledge of virtualisation are also in demand,”
he adds. Red Hat offers three levels of training to
FOSS experts. “Level 1 goes into the depth of systems
administration. Level 2 involves acquiring networking
and security skills while Level 3 goes deeper into
understanding device issues,” says Iyer.
Meanwhile, with 90 per cent of the BPO contact
centres in India based on low-cost FOSS technology,
skills in Asterisk are much sought after. “The future
of business in BPOs depends upon reasonably priced
technologies and equally priced expertise to help them
manage operations. This has resulted in a demand for
FOSS certified resources like Digium Certified Asterisk
Professionals (dCAP),” says Limbani.
The route to expertise
But how does one become a FOSS expert? Well, you
first need to work on understanding hardware and
FOSS on your own, then get trained and certified, after
which you must keep abreast with new developments.
“Start by downloading FOSS from the Internet and
implementing it on a PC or laptop. Use the online
community to get support initially. FOSS skills are
acquired over a period of time and thus are in high
demand,” says Bhattacharya.
Thereafter, go in for a certified training programme.
“A formal training in FOSS helps professionals sharpen
FOSS skills, allowing them to use the tools in a holistic
manner. Without the training, one tends to use only
the modules one actually works on,” says Satish
Gopinath, proprietor, Integer Education. A. Saravanan,
founder and director, Lynus Academy, says: “FOSS
training provides the necessary knowledge and infuses
confidence in professionals. It helps them to take on
new and emerging technologies faster.”
Once you have attained expertise in FOSS, you
THE COMPLETE M AGAZINE ON OPEN SOURCE
BETA
36  |  NOVEMBER 2009  |  LINUX For You  |  www.LinuxForU.com
Formal training vs self learning
Self-learning, though hailed, is a very lengthy process as
one has to totally depend on community support or look
out for someone with knowledge in a particular FOSS
domain. Formal training eases the learning process.
Yet the debate goes on about the self-learning route vs
formal training.
While Bhattacharya hails self-learning as a very good
route to learning FOSS programming, as it helps overcome
mental roadblocks and the diffidence to interact with larger
communities, Limbani doubts the self-training mode, as the
trainee loses out on learning about the various permutations
and combinations that can be applied in a particular FOSS
technology.
“Formal training provides you a mentor to look up to
in case you are stuck in a particular problem, giving easy
access to qualified resources. This helps you dodge the
pitfalls in the deployment and service of a particular FOSS
project. This results in an overall win-win situation for the
professional, the enterprise and the FOSS project,” says
Limbani. “Nowadays, when cost is not the money but time,
formal training helps the professional have time with his
side. Formal training helps the candidate learn the tricks
that the trainer would have mastered during a lifetime.
Further, the edge of getting certifications and industry
recognition, helps the candidate in getting a head start,”
adds Srivastava.
would need to build up the expertise in an open
source product to build niche skills. “For example,
your value would be more if you call yourself an expert
in Magento and Drupal, than a PHP developer,” says
Minocha.
Looking ahead, with companies replacing previous
proprietary solutions with FOSS alternatives, the
demand for trained FOSS experts and the need for faster
mechanisms to churn out FOSS professionals is only set
to grow. So be quick to roll up your sleeves and get to
work on FOSS! 
By: Vanisha Joseph
The author loves to experiment and writing for LINUX For You
is her latest experiment. So, beware! Just a minute, she also
happens to be a journalist during the day.
Your favourite Linux Magazine is
now on the Web, too.
LinuxForU.com
Follow us on Twitter @LinuxForYou
For U & Me  |  Tutorial ______________________________________________________________________________________________
GIMP for Beginners, Part 5
‘Isolation’
Welcome to the fifth instalment of the Gimp tutorials. Here we will unravel the
major functions of selection tools, with a particular focus on Isolation.
I
solation is the crucial tool part
of image editing and is handy
when you play around with
an image. Each selection tool
comes in use while isolating on different
parts of an image. So what exactly is
Isolation? Generally, it extracts/isolates
a relevant part from an image for further
use as another image. In this tutorial, we
will be focusing on isolating images using
various tools.
You should find the raw materials at www.
linuxforu.com/gimptutorial/part5.tar.gz, and
experiment with them using the methods
mentioned. To ease the learning process, we
will go through every possible isolation, one
by one, using different tools and methods.
Thus, I have segregated the tutorial into
different parts:
 Isolating using the Rectangle selection
 Isolating using the Ellipse selection
 Isolating using the Free/Lasso selection
 Isolating using the Path selection
 Isolating using the Fuzzy/Colour
selection
38  |  NOVEMBER 2009  |  LINUX For You  |  www.LinuxForU.com
Note: We generally use corresponding
tools for the various shapes and natures.
However, this doesn’t limit us to use,
experience, and experiment with other
tools to isolate non-relevant shapes. For
instance, we normally use the Rectangle
and Ellipse selection to isolate rectangles/
squares and ellipses, though the
applications are not limited to them alone.
We can always use the Lasso/Free selection
tool or the Path tool to isolate a part,
irrespective of its shape and nature. That’s
why Path tools are generally called the
universal selection tool as we can realise
almost all the other selection tools with it.
Isolating images using the Rectangle/
Ellipse selection
Isolating images using the rectangular and
the ellipse selection tools is the easiest of
them all. In fact, authors writing for various
technology magazines will find these tools
a great boon. Isolating the relevant part
increases the visible spectrum and thus
makes the image more pronounced and
____________________________________________________________________________________________________ Tutorial  |  For U & Me

easy to view. So, if you want to show

only a particular window, then you
don’t have to submit the full screen
desktop. Instead, use the rectangular
selection tool, isolate the requisite
part and then submit the image. It’s a
very easy process and helps others to
recognise what you want to show.
I have included some raw images
to help you teach things easily by
using the same image snippet I Figure 1: Rectangle Selection
used. For rectangular isolating, grab
the ‘Rectangle Raw.png’ image from
the CD and open it in the Gimp. Our
aim is to isolate the PTS window
from the screenshot and make it
look good as well.
After opening the image in the
Gimp, grab the rectangular selection
tool from the toolbox or press R.
Create a rough selection as shown in
Figure 1. Make sure that the Rounded
corners option is enabled from the
Tools option menu of the Rectangle
selection. Now zoom in to erase
minor selection defects and to gain
the perfect isolation. As you can see,
in Figure 1, the selection is bulging
outside the requisite area. To make it
perfect and professional-looking, we
will remove the entire background
except for the main window.
To make things look sleek, we
can either reduce the selection Figure 2: Lasso tool in action
or increase it, if the selection is
deformed. The rectangular and resolution, just create the template. the pasted part, we need to crop the
ellipse selection tools provide Paste the selected portion using Edit undesired area. To do this, simply right-
editing corners from which you can → Paste. In our layer assignment click on the newly pasted layer and
manoeuvre the selection according (published in the August 2009 issue of select Alpha to Selection. Now navigate
to your needs. Just point the mouse LFY) we learnt about the transition of to Image → Crop to Selection and notice
to where the selection is deformed. layers that are pasted. Currently, the that the image is being cropped.
You can then drag (increase/ pasted layer is in floating transition, That’s it! We have successfully
decrease) the selection by holding and from here we have to decide the isolated a rectangular portion. But
down the left mouse button and transition we want to set. Since we if you save the image now, you will
moving it up, down, left or right. If have opted to edit in a new template, get a square cornered image. We had
you don’t have much control over we can shift the floating transition initially isolated using the Rounded
the mouse, use the arrow keys to get to a permanent new layer. To make Corner option; thus to save the image
precise results. Continue doing so your pasted image a permanent layer, with rounded corners, just disable
for every part of the square, i.e., the simply select the Floating transition the Background layer by clicking on
PTS window. layer from the Layer Box and click the eye and save it. If you want to add
Once you have a perfect selection, on the Create a new layer icon. more pleasing effects, give a shadow
navigate to Edit → Copy. Then create a After that, the image pasted will be to the image. Right click the pasted
new template File → New. Notice that designated a new layer. layer and select Alpha to Selection.
the Gimp automatically provides the Notice that the whole image is Open the drop shadow wizard from
resolution of the image that you are bigger than the pasted part, so in Filters → Light and Shadow → Drop
working on. So don’t tinker with the order to create the image in the size of Shadow with values as 0, 30 and 100

www.LinuxForU.com  |  LINUX For You  |  NOVEMBER 2009  |  39

For U & Me  |  Tutorial _____________________________________________________________________________________________________
for X, Y and Blur respectively.
Save the image and we are done
with the first isolation process.
We could have skipped copy-
pasting in a new template and
instead opted for Crop to selection
just after finishing the selection,
but we didn’t. This was because
whenever you opt for the same
method and save the image,
you will never be able to get the
rounded corners.
Note: The procedure of
copying, pasting, cropping and
providing a shadow to the selection
in a new window will be used in
every isolation method. So that
makes it a universal method for all
selections.
Isolating using the Ellipse
selection is exactly the same. The
only difference lies in the shape of
the image. So, for circles, we use
the Ellipse selection instead of the
Rectangle selection.
Isolating using the Free/Lasso
selection
The Lasso tool or the Free hand
selection tool (also known as the
polygon selection tool) is a stripped
down version of the Path tool. Yet,
it can be as powerful as the Path
tool at times, with its own strengths
and benefits. It provides easier and
smoother navigation all around,
when compared to the Path tool.
However, it does have its own
oddities. You cannot recover the
path once deleted. Also, editing the
path that you have created isn’t as
easy as in the Path tool.
The Lasso tool is very efficient
if you have mastered it and if you
have quite a good control over the
mouse. Lasso is just perfect for
isolating a polygon selection and
with the Gimp 2.6, the Freehand
selection got refurbished and
acquired the ability of the Polygon
selection, using multiple clicks.
Previously you had to complete the
40  |  NOVEMBER 2009  |  LINUX For You  |  www.LinuxForU.com
Figure 3: Difference between selections using Lasso and Path tools
selection in one go without leaving
the left mouse button but now you
are free to leave the mouse and
complete the selection whenever you
want. Working with the Lasso tool
is almost identical to working with
the Path tool so it will be easy to get
a hang of the other, if you know the
workings of any one of them.
To get started with the Lasso
tool, grab the image Lasso Raw.
png from the CD and open it in the
Gimp. Select the lasso tool and start
creating a selection from the bottom.
To make the selection just click on the
point from where you want to start
and once you are done, a circle will
appear. Move the mouse away from
that point and you will notice a line
stretching from that point onward;
click again to create another lap.
Continue doing it until you gain the
shape you want to isolate.
Tip: You can make the
selection process snappier by
creating a significant distance
between two laps. This trick comes
handy when the selected part of the
image has a straight section that
needs to be outlined/isolated.
However, when you select a curved
section, keep the distance to a bare
minimum—by doing this you get a
very clean and smooth curved
selection with less distortion.
You can start the selection
from outside the image pane. As
already pointed out in the previous
assignment, the Gimp selection tools
will only select the part inside the
image. Thus, if you have less space to
work with, don’t hesitate to exploit
the boundaries.
So once you have opened the
image, start from the boy, and then
slowly and steadily form an outline.
You can undo the step by pressing the
backspace key; however, if you have
some abnormality in the selection,
just take your pointer towards the
deformed part and the Gimp will
display all the points/laps created
with that particular region. Grab
the point and holding down the
left mouse button, move it to fix
the misalignment. Continue with
the selection and for long straight
boundaries use decent gaps between
the points. Join the end point with
the starting point to complete the
selection as show in Figure 2. Once
you have completed the selection,
the Gimp will frame the selected
part in an active dotted line (Active
Selection), and from there you can
copy paste in a new template as
discussed above.
Selection Tip: If, by chance,
you missed removing or adding
some part in the selection, revert to
the original image and while
pressing Shift (to add) or Ctrl (to
remove), create a selection within
the original selection. Once you are
done, copy and paste to finalise the
selection process.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________
Isolating using the
Path selection
Isolation using the Path selection
is identical to that of the Lasso/
Free hand selection tool. The only
difference is that the movement
of the path is a little rugged and
stacked compared to the Lasso
tool. On the other hand, the Path
tool lets you restore the path using
the path tab in the Layer Box.
The best and the worst part of
the path tool is that it allows you to
change/edit every point that you join
to create the path. This sometimes
turns out to be a headache. For
example, suppose you are working
with a complex image and have
created many joints to complete
the selection. And, by mistake, you
messed up and forgot to join the
points, yet you continued with the
job. In this case, in the end, the
selection will be incomplete and you
will have to find the missing joint.
Another plus for the path tool is
that it’s pretty easy to use and all the
joints/points you create are visible
right through the end.
Isolating using the Fuzzy/
Colour selection
The Fuzzy and Colour selections
are not just another bunch of
selection tools. Both of them are
very efficient and offer quick
results for isolating images. Both
also have a pretty similar approach.
The Colour selection is better than
the Fuzzy selection, as the former
offers a wide selection irrespective
of layers, while the latter offers
selections limited to the layer and
colour tone.
Both these tools let you
isolate images from a single toned
background. If the background
has multiple tones, then you
can carry out the isolation steps
a number of times, selecting
different colour tones and then
removing them. These tools come
in handy while creating buttons,
logos, etc, and if you want to turn
an image background transparent.
Since transparent backgrounds
Tutorial  |  For U & Me
offer more flexibility over coloured
backgrounds, these tools come into
play a lot.
For this assignment, open the
Colour Select Raw.png image from
the LFY CD and grab the Colour
selection tool. Now select the
background, which is white in this
case. I have kept the background
simple for quicker learning. Once
the background is selected, head
to Colour → Colour to Alpha and
with default settings, click OK.
Notice that the background is now
transparent. You can always wipe
away the remnants of colour near
the border using the Blur tool. Save
the image in png (Portable Network
Graphics) and notice the difference.
A transparent background image
can be used anywhere while an
image with a particular background
colour will only look good when in
the same colour region.
Fuzzy selection works in the
same way but for smaller regions.
We have already discussed the
foreground selection tool in the
third part of the series on the
Gimp, published in the September
issue. So that’s it for now—we have
covered almost every aspect of
selection tools. We will be working
with them throughout the series
in a limited or in a sophisticated
manner; but for now we are done
with the selection. The next tutorial
will be a bit of surprise; it could
be related to something high
definition or a wallpaper. I have
included PTS with two windows
(Multiple Rectangle Raw.png and
the final output). Try getting that
result using a tip hidden in this
article. Do stay tuned, and do not
forget to send in your queries and
suggestions!  
By: Shashwat Pant
The author is a FOSS/hardware
enthusiast who likes to review software
and tweak his hardware for optimum
performance. He is interested in
Python/Qt programming and is fond of
benchmarking the latest Linux distros
and software.
www.LinuxForU.com  |  LINUX For You  |  NOVEMBER 2009  |  41
For U & Me  |  Review _______________________________________________________________________________________________

Experiencing
Sabayon 5
oSh!
Sabayon's strength has always been to showcase the
power of FOSS on the desktop. Once upon a time, it used
to come preinstalled with Linux-compatible games. But
the current releases have done away with the idea of
showcasing the games factor and concentrate on giving
an out-of-the box desktop experience.

abayon 5 (or Five oh!, as the
project team likes to call it)
came out on October 2, 2009.
As has been the norm since the
last couple of releases, it's been divided into a
KDE and GNOME live DVD. The last version
LFY had bundled was version Four oh! (we
skipped 4.1 and 4.2). It was a single Live DVD
that contained both GNOME and KDE. So
what our CD team has done this time is
combine the two separate ISOs into a single
live multi-boot DVD. The downside is, you'll
only get either of the two desktops, at a time.
The boot screen of the DVD gives you
several options to boot the following:
GNOME, KDE, a media centre desktop,
UMPC, etc. I've only tried the first two.
Depending on your desktop of choice,
you'll need to select one and proceed. The
boot splash theme is, as always, black with
a few coloured stripes with the Sabayon
branding in the centre—not that great,
but pretty smart and professional-looking,
nonetheless. Well, the same image is also
the default wallpaper in both GNOME and
KDE. Coming back to the boot process, the
live distro boot speed is comparable to other
popular distros, and midway through the
boot process, Sabayon starts playing a song
that has something to do with “the rock and
roll hall of fame.”

Note: On my assembled AMD/

NVIDIA system, without
manual intervention, Sabayon
booted to a 1024x768 px
display—although it had
detected and loaded the
correct NVIDIA drivers. The
easiest way to fix this is while
you're on the boot screen – at
the point when you select
between the different boot

42  |  NOVEMBER 2009  |  LINUX For You  |  www.LinuxForU.com

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________ Review
options, hit F4 and select the display resolution, there
and then. On my Intel-based wide-screen laptop (which
uses a resolution of 1200x800 pixels), things worked all
right without any manual intervention.
KDExperience
Sabayon comes with a custom themed version of KDE
4.3.1 (v4.3.2 is not available in the software repository
yet). Instead of the stock Air theme introduced in KDE
4.3, Sabayon uses Elegance—a dark theme that gels well
with the overall Sabayon 5 look and feel. And unlike other
distros, a number of other desktop themes are preinstalled
to let you customise the desktop the way you want without
requiring to download additional themes. Additionally,
it comes with a decent collection of wallpapers too, and
Kwin effects work out-of-the-box if you have a capable
graphics card.
The resolution of panel is awkwardly set at a width of
1024px, leaving some blank space on both sides of a screen
with a resolution of 1280x1024px (or, any resolution where
the screen width is more than 1024px). Well, many not-so-
mainstream distros have a fetish for this sort of a Mac OS
X-ish panel setting, which sort of seems odd considering
the fact that the rest of the screen on the left and right side
of panel goes waste. Anyway, we all know how to set this
straight, don't we? Strangely, essential shortcuts like 'Show
Desktop' and 'Battery Indicator' ( for laptop users) are
missing from the panel. Again, we know how to take care
of this.
While the stock KDE only has ‘System Settings’, a
home directory shortcut for Dolphin and the Konqueror
Web browser as our default 'favourites' in the Kickoff
application launcher, Sabayon has added more natural
fits for our favourites here (Firefox, Kopete, KTorrent,
Konversation IRC client, Amarok, VLC Player, OOo Writer
and Calc). However, I believe a home directory shortcut
would have been a better selection instead of an IRC client;
besides, ‘System Settings’ is also an essential app for those
who like to tinker with their system frequently.
The default installation comes with lots of handy
applications for most desktop requirements, but some of
the essential apps like Digikam (digital camera tool) and
the GIMP are missing. As for an image viewer/manager,
Gwenview is also missing. So accessing images means
opening them in the Okular document viewer. Of course,
these can be had from the official software repository. In
fact, although it comes with the Firefox 3.5 as the default
browser, the repo also offers Chromium (open source
Google Chrome) as an alternative.
After using Chromium for a week, I found it to be
pretty stable. I'll definitely recommend it over FF simply
because of the well-thought-out UI which gives you much
more screen space to view Web pages, compared to any
other browser, besides the ability to run multiple incognito
windows (private browsing sessions). Coming back to FF
(and even in Chromium), one good thing is that mime
  |  For U & Me
Figure 1: KDE Live desktop
types are properly set. So
you'll have no problem
in directly opening e-
mail attachments, or for
that matter, when you
download anything from
the Web, straight inside
the required application.
By the way, wireless
connection on my Intel
Wi-Fi based laptop
worked out-of-the-box. Figure 2: Default Kickoff favourites
What I also noticed is the
NetworkManager system tray widget has been cleaned
up a lot. I don't remember seeing this polish when KDE
4.3 first came out. What struck me as surprising was
the inclusion of the Wicd network manager—which is
basically redundant!
Sabayon comes with most of the multimedia codes
preinstalled. So whether you throw DVD videos at it
or DivX files, VLC should be able to take care of it all.
Amarok, on the other hand, takes care of your MP3 music
collection. The version is 1.1.80 (2.2 beta)—the final 2.2
version is yet to be made available in the repo. Note that
although this version reintroduces an equaliser, yet it's
greyed out in Sabayon. Besides these two power apps, you
also have the minimalist Dragon Player and the XBMC
media centre application.
The version of OpenOffice.org is 3.1. It comes with an
integrated Oxygen icon theme by default, which means
better KDE integration because the icons don't look out of
place in KDE4 any more. However, the KDE4 integration
is nowhere near complete—the Save as/Open file dialogue
boxes are still that of the stock OOo, instead of being KDE4
based. Apart from this, English spelling packs are missing.
Another thing to note here is that font rendering inside
OOo and Firefox are not anti-aliased out-of-the-box—
which makes them look a bit crooked.
www.LinuxForU.com  |  LINUX For You  |  NOVEMBER 2009  |  43
For U & Me  |  Review ______________________________________________________________________________________________________
Figure 3: Package categories in Sabayon installer
Figure 4: Installation in progress
Install(xperience)
There's an 'Install on Disk' (live installer) shortcut right on the
desktop. The installer is based on Anaconda, so Fedora users
should feel right at home. The Sabayon version is customised
to an extent to include some other choices. For example, the
third screen gives you an option to choose between a KDE
desktop (or GNOME, if you've booted into that DE), XBMC
media centre or Fluxbox. The following screen gives you an
option to select/deselect the broad software categories—office
apps, Internet apps, multimedia apps, and basic free games.
The next screen is where you'll enable/disable the following
services: Samba, Cups, NFS, SSH.
Strangely, once you're done with the partition set-up, if
your root is less than 8GB in size, the installer gives a warning.
Ignoring it is a safe bet as, post installation, it only covers up
around 4.2 GB of disk space. Probably this is a message that
was introduced when Sabayon was a single bootable DVD
consisting of both KDE and GNOME, but it doesn't make
sense any more now that the ISOs have been split up.
Also, being based on the Anaconda installer, the Grub
boot screen would only show the options of choosing
44  |  NOVEMBER 2009  |  LINUX For You  |  www.LinuxForU.com
Figure 5: Gnome live desktop; GNOME Do in the centre
Figure 6: Enjoying last.fm in Firefox; F-Spot photo manager in the background
between Sabayon and 'Others'. However, post installation,
when you reboot, you should see all your other distros on
the boot screen—at least that's what happened in my case.
The final installation ( file copying) process takes a
while—around 10 to 15 minutes. And then you reboot!
Package manage(xperience)
Now that you have the distro installed on your system,
you'd obviously want to install the missing packages.
Sulfur as a package manager is really slow—every time
you want to navigate to a new tab, you get a “Please wait
...take a break!” message. Additionally, it has a severely
clumsy-looking UI, as if designed in the last century.
Although the options are straightforward, they could
become confusing when an application fails to install
because of some error. Besides, buttons and options have
been spread around multiple tabs, which makes using
Sulfur awfully cumbersome. However, I’ve got to admit
that the online repository has a decent collection of
applications, and the mirrors are pretty fast.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________ Review
An interesting point is that
packages here have user ratings, which
can be useful when you have to choose
between multiple alternatives that
serve the same purpose. However, note
that the Sabayon user base is certainly
not comparable to Ubuntu's to give you
foolproof ratings. For example, Choqok
is perhaps one of the best Twitter
clients, yet it has got no ratings here. So,
if you have a Sabayon online account,
you might as well rate packages to
make life easier for future users.
GNOMExperience
The GNOME desktop (v2.26.3) greets
you with GNOME Do right in the
centre of the screen. Check it out;
it's a very innovative application
launcher. The top and bottom panels
are somewhat customised—the
workspace switcher is on the top
right beside the clock, while detected
mountable partitions are on the right
side of the bottom panel. I certainly
can't figure out the reasoning behind
this sort of customisation.
The desktop theme is based
on the greyish ClearlooksSL
theme for controls, and the black
MurrineCleanGlass window border
theme, which gels well with the
overall Sabayon look. Unlike KDE,
desktop effects don't work out-of-
the-box here. You'll need to activate
the Compiz Fusion-based effects
by double clicking the 'Compiz
Fusion Icon' on your desktop.
When activated, it triggers the
Emerald Theme Manager to load up
(accessible from the system tray),
which gives you a handy selection of
themes to choose from. On the down
side, enabling Compiz gets rid of the
Alt+F2 shortcut association to trigger
the run dialogue on my system. A very
displeasing bug!
There are two volume mixers on the
top panel—one near the system tray,
and the other, right next to GNOME
menu. While the former doesn't work
on my system, the latter does.
The default media player app is
Totem for both videos and audio, and
is capable of handling most media
formats you throw at it. Rhythmbox is
  |  For U & Me
missing, which I would have preferred
for handling my audio files. The XMMS
clone called Audacious2 is available
to fill the gap, if we don't like Totem to
handle audio. Besides these two apps,
the 'Sound & Video' section has dvd::
rip, Brasero Disc Burner, XBMC, and a
bunch of Pulse Audio controls. Talking
about PulseAudio, the controls don't
work on my system—so I figure the
integration is incomplete.
Unlike its KDE counterpart, the
GNOME version comes with GIMP
besides the F-Spot Photo Manager.
However, by default, GIMP is
associated as the viewer for images
instead of F-Spot. We also have the
full OpenOffice.org office suite and
Evince to open PDFs.
As for Internet apps, we have the
Deluge Bittorrent client, GNOME
PPP, Firefox, Pidgin, a remote desktop
client, XChat and Wicd (yet again,
when we already have a working
NetworkManager). Yes, there're a
number of GNOME games available
too—but that's all. So, if you want more
apps, then install the distro and use
Sulfur to install the apps you require.
My experience
Overall, Sabayon is indeed a lovely
distro. It looks great and is quite
stable, yet it somehow gives the
feeling that there's something missing,
reminding me of the song, “All you
need is love, love, love... Love is all you
need.” Or do I feel this way because
I'm just too used to the mainstream
Mandriva and the likes?
Whatever the reason, Sabayon does
look pretty rough around the edges—a
good example is the package manager,
and the default selection of apps. So
I figure it does need a lot of love if it
wants to compete in the mainstream.
By the way, Sabayon comes
preinstalled with a demo version of
the World of Goo. It's very addictive;
give it a try! 
By: Atanu Datta
He likes to head bang and play air
guitar in his spare time. Oh, and he’s
also a part of the LFY Bureau.
www.LinuxForU.com  |  LINUX For You  |  NOVEMBER 2009  |  45
For U & Me  |  Review _______________________________________________________________________________________________

Can the Minimalist Approach of

CDlinux
Win You Over?
In the world of minimalist GNU/Linux distributions, we introduce you to
CDlinux, which originated in the People’s Republic of China, in 1999. Four
years later, in 2003, the first public release, version 0.4.2, came out. The latest
version 0.9.4, which was released on September 3, 2009, is a mere 67MB.

C
Dlinux, or Compact Distro
Linux, was primarily intended
for systems administrators, as a
system rescue tool. However, it
can also be used as a bare minimum portable
desktop OS and as a customisable OS base. The
default desktop environment is Xfce (currently
4.6.1) with the Thunar file manager, thus
ensuring that CDlinux cuts out the fat. The
whole distro loads on the RAM, so the access is
rapid. The official edition’s RAM requirement is
only 64 MB. CDlinux is capable of booting from
CD/DVD and HDD. It also supports USB and
IEEE1394 interfaces.
According to the head developer, Ben
Zhao: “The original purpose of CDlinux was
for it to be used as an emergency/rescue
tool for systems administrators. But thanks
to the versatility of Linux, it can also be
customised for other types of users. It was
used in schools by the Yellow Sheep River
project (yellowsheepriver.com) several
years ago, and now I am helping the Beijing
International School (biss.com.cn) to set
up a version for kids. I have also helped
others set up CDlinux for applications like a
firewall, NAS, etc.”
Currently, there are two core developers of
CDlinux, Ben Zhao and Penta Cai. I discovered
CDlinux as an unmaintained and ‘dead’ distro
in linux.org. But when I visited the official
website, I came to know that though it was
not very popular, it certainly wasn’t ‘dead’ and
is still being developed. After using the 0.6.2
version of CDlinux, which was about 57.2 MB
in size, I was impressed. Far from being dead,

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_____________________________________________________________________________________________________ Review   |  For U & Me

this distro was very up-to-date and under regular scheduled

development. After getting in touch (through e-mail) with
Ben Zhao, the targets and future plans of CDlinux became
clear. After using CDlinux 0.6.2 for a brief period, I found that
CDlinux lacked many graphical applications for everyday
desktop use, though there was nothing that the command
line couldn’t handle.
When I asked Zhao about the missing applications,
like word processors and image editors, he made it very
clear what CDlinux was about and what its aims were:
“It’s a pity that a word processing application is
not included in the official release. But OpenOffice is
too big. KOffice has too many dependencies, and the
smaller ones are just not stable enough. Try to open a
complex .doc, and you’ll get a lot of crashes. And the
i18n support is far from usable. AbiWord, Gnumeric,
and the GIMP are already in the repository, along with Figure 1: CDlinux desktop
many other applications like aMule, ClamAV (an anti-
virus), Mplayer, Transmission, Wine, etc. We’ll find a
way to make them available with the next release. There
are still some other packages with licensing problems,
like Mplayer codecs ( for various audio/video formats),
libdvdcss (to play encrypted DVDs), Skype, Flash plug-
ins, firmware for various hardware, and some ‘Wined’
Windows applications. Regarding those packages, I don’t
want to ship them with the official CDlinux, because
we want CDlinux to be clean! Maybe in the future, we’ll
help to create a community release that contains these
packages. Many GUI tools for CD/DVD burning, wireless
networking, installation, saving settings, etc, are planned
for the 0.7 release.”
The focus of CDlinux is to be a good administrative
tool, with only stable, necessary and free applications and
excellent i18n support.
Figure 2: A snippet of available applications
While the community edition was always on the radar,
it finally got launched on October 20, 2008, featuring a lot
of proprietary codecs, and a lot more applications. Today, The standard edition
CDlinux has three parallel editions: This edition is an official release of CDlinux and contains
Mini: Command line only, and uses Busybox with a lot a patched version of the Xfce 4.6.1 desktop environment,
of command line tools. a patched Linux-2.6.30.5, with Firefox 3.5.2, Pidgin 2.6.1,
Standard: A superset of Mini, featuring Xfce, and a Slypheed (a mail client), ePdfViewer and GpicView (an
bare minimum set of applications. This only contains image viewer). The older 0.6.2 release (standard) featured
free software. Xine with free codecs, which went missing from the 0.9.2
Community: Made from the standard edition by release. The 0.9.2 release contained TestDisk, which made
adding more graphical applications, this edition is more it a better rescue tool and a new CDlinux HDD and USB
appropriate for the everyday home user. It also contains installer.
many non-free components. To begin with, download the image of the latest
I used CDlinux on an AMD Athlon64 X2 4400+ CDlinux, burn it on a CD(RW) and get started. Enter
processor with a RS690G chipset, 2 GB RAM; the Intel the CD into the CD drive after you make sure that
Pentium D with ATI Radeon 200x integrated graphics and the system boots using the CD drive. Then select the
512 MB RAM, and two more Intel systems (one Core and language to boot CDlinux from the bootloader menu
another Pentium MMX 200 MHz). and press Enter. You will see the CDlinux logo in the
Let’s briefly look at the various editions. We will be boot splash screen for a few seconds. This was not
working with version 0.9.3. The latest 0.9.4 release is a present in the previous stable release (0.6.2), which used
bugfix maintenance edition and the site encourages users a text prompt. After this, the desktop loads smoothly. It
to update to it. auto-detected my default 1280 x 1024 desktop resolution

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For U & Me  |  Review ______________________________________________________________________________________________________
Figure 3: K3b and SMPlayer
and also presents a manual setting prompt.
The desktop shows the auto-mounted partitions. In
my case, the distro successfully detected all the disks. The
Xfce menu bar in the bottom contains the quick launch
buttons, desktop buttons, the Xfce sound mixer, the time,
the log off button and the Xfce menu button with the
CDlinux logo. I can enter all the partitions and access
the files. The 0.9.3 uses Xfce 4.6.1, which has a cooler look
than the older one, with a new cursor and icon theme.
The user drives of my Fedora partition were protected
and could not be entered. Firefox 3.5.2 comes with the
compact menu plug-in installed, which made the menus
compactly fit into a button on the top left. It also had the
‘Flash block’ plug-in, even though the Standard edition
didn’t have Flash support. This plug-in is of immense use
with the Community Edition (which has many non-free
components). Since CDlinux loads on the RAM, the slow
IDE HDD was not a factor any more. The experience was
very smooth, without a single glitch or any slowdown. I
have a habit of opening a lot of tabs by middle clicking
on the links, and that slows down the system with my
default Fedora 10 (KDE and Xfce). CDlinux allowed me
to do this happily. Other than browsing, Pidgin was there
to connect to chat accounts and to freenode. Mail client
Slypheed was also present. The Internet experience with
CDlinux was very good and I just didn’t feel like logging
into Fedora again. Xfburn was introduced in the standard
edition 0.9.3.
In the Systems section, a new addition is the
TestDisk data rescue and disk repair application. You
can use this to recover deleted files, corrupt partition
tables, manipulate the boot sector and a lot more.
Other than Thunar, the default file manager of Xfce,
CDlinux provides a patched and tuned version of
Midnight Commander, which Zhao recommends. In
the Accessories section, you can find a character map,
the Galculator (a GTK2-based scientific calculator), and
the Xfce’s mousepad and Xarchiver. The 0.9.3 version
48  |  NOVEMBER 2009  |  LINUX For You  |  www.LinuxForU.com
Figure 4: A few more apps
also introduces Clipman, the clipboard utility. Finally,
we come to the rxvt terminal program to enter the
command line. I tried enabling desktop effects from Xfce
control panel -> window manager tweaks -> compositing.
It worked fine without any visible performance degrade,
except that when the transparency was enabled for
moving windows, it went choppy. The CPU frequency
scaling, a new update to this edition, adjusts the CPU
clock for different loads. Change it as per your needs at
Settings -> CPU Powersaving Settings.
The 0.6.2 CDlinux release contained no graphical
HDD/USB installer, and it has to be installed manually
by modifying an existing bootloader or installing one. In
this version, I found a graphical installer that is still under
development. The graphical installer is capable of installing
CDlinux in a USB drive or in the Microsoft Windows C:
partition. The installation of CDlinux is non-destructive
and does not format or remove anything off the drive. It
just copies the CDlinux files from the CD in the Windows
partition and then installs the GRUB4DOS bootloader.
Though this didn’t work for me. If you know how to configure
a bootloader, it can be easily installed manually.
The command line uses bash as shell, a patched
Busybox for core utilities and lots of other programs,
like fdisk, Parted, Syslinux, Grub, TestDisk, Midnight
Commander, VI text editor, and wget. And oh! You can
also find the ‘chntpw’ program with which you can reset
Microsoft Windows account passwords and manipulate
registry values. You need to ‘sudo’ to run a command as the
root user, or run them in the super-user mode terminal.
The community edition
The community edition of CDlinux has all the applications
that we mentioned earlier and, in addition, a lot more
extra packages like Wine (v1.0.1) (without OpenGL
support), Java Runtime, SMPlayer, the Gimp, etc.
The booting time was a bit high for this edition. This
might be because it copies the packages onto the RAM,
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________ Review   |  For U & Me
but you can ask the OS not to load the modules onto
the RAM, and mount them in loop mode, instead, with
the CDL_LOOP kernel parameter. After it boots in, you
will get the same smooth performance as the standard
edition, once you reach the desktop.
I started with the multimedia section, which is the
deciding factor for me in selecting an OS for general
desktop use. I found Livestation 2.7.0 for livetv and
radio broadcasts, which replaced Gmlive from v0.9.3,
two front ends of Mplayer, the Mplayer GUI and
SMPlayer, and a burner called Xfburn. The audio and
video experience was pretty good as the support of
non-free codecs was out-of-the-box. The Internet menu
revealed a lot of applications including Firefox 3.5.1,
Pidgin and Slypheed – other additions are Skype2.0,
Filezilla, aMule, etc. The redundant Opera in v0.9.2 was
removed in 0.9.3. Zoho is used as the office suite, but
GNumeric, a spreadsheet application is also included.
The 0.9.3 version has a new addition — KchmViewer, a
compiled HTML viewer. Printer support was lacking
in the standard edition. The community edition comes
with CUPS and printers can now be configured. You can
also configure a wireless network with the help of wicd
(not in the standard edition).
The strange part is that this edition comes with
the Avast anti-virus, home edition, though you need to
register with avast.com and get a free personal-use serial
number to activate it. With TestDisk from the standard
edition, the community edition also comes with the
popular Partimage and Gparted partition managers,
making partitioning easy.
And of course, it has a Games section containing
Minesweeper, card games, and DOSBox. DOSBox is not a
game but a DOS emulator. It often comes into the ‘games’
category because of its usefulness in running classic
games like Alladin, Prince of Persia, Invaders, Wolfenstein,
etc.
We now have GCC (v3.4.6), as it now (v0.9.3) supports
compiling the official Linux kernel and also additional
modules and drivers.
Check out the full list of applications of the CDlinux
Community Edition at CDlinux.info/wiki/doku.php/
releases/0.9.2/packages
Customisation
The main attraction of CDlinux is that it provides an
operating system with the latest Linux kernel, drivers
and a bare-minimum set of applications that are updated
and stable. CDlinux provides the base of the operating
system on which you can add building blocks to make
a complete OS that exactly matches your needs. This
is unlike others like Puppy Linux and Slitaz CDlinux
that currently do not have any ‘remaster’ tools. To add
customised packages to CDlinux, it needs to make/
download the squashfs md images of the applications
and place them in the ‘local’ directory of the CDlinux
directory hierarchy to be auto-detected by CDlinux. This
is just like the puppy .sfs squashfs packages. Even desktop
environments other than Xfce can be used on top of the
Mini edition. Because CDlinux doesn’t have any repository
as of now, .md packages are not available easily and one
has to make or hack them from the community edition.
Though this might not be very customisable for general
users, it definitely is very interesting for geeks. As CDlinux
approaches the 1.0 release, we can expect CDlinux
repositories to become available with .md packages.
CDlinux provides some boot parameters that are
very easy and extremely useful. Check out CDlinux.
info/wiki/doku.php/doc/faq/cdl_options for details on boot
parameters.
Support
This is where CDlinux lets you down. According to
Zhao, there is documentation and support for CDlinux,
but mostly in Chinese, so it is of no use if it is not
translated for non-Chinese users. You will get very
little documentation for CDlinux customisation. Older
documentation relevant to the 0.4 release of CDlinux can
be found in CDlinux.info/archive/0.4/howto.html. There
is no dedicated forum or an IRC channel. According to
Zhao, new documentation is being written.
Gazing into the crystal ball
When I asked Zao what his favourite feature of CDlinux
was, this was what he said:
“Yes, CDlinux is stable and up to date, and it is
compact. The features and libs/apps of CDlinux are
carefully selected. We only ship stable and usable
applications — no flashy ones. CDlinux is clean. In fact,
we are very proud of CDlinux — there is too much to talk
about, like it can be run in memory, which has been a
feature of CDlinux since its birth. I think the best feature
of CDlinux is its i18n support. CDlinux supports i18n for
all major languages/locales (over 100). Although for size
considerations, l10n support is limited, users can easily
extend CDlinux to support l10n for their own language/
locale. Many applications are fine tuned/patched, e.g.,
if you use Midnight Commander (my favourite file
manager), you’ll find that the version in CDlinux is the
best. Cheers!” 
Links:
• Official website: CDlinux.info
• FAQs: CDlinux.info/wiki/doku.php/doc/faq/index
By: Arjun Pakrashi
The author is currently pursuing a B.Sc in computer science
from Asutosh College in Kolkata. His main areas of interest
are open source software, Linux programming and data
structures. He plans to do research-based work, and
become an OSS contributor.
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IT Admin  |  Insight ___________________________________________________________________________________________________

A Liberating
Learning
Infrastructure
Last month we looked at FOSS applications for beginners and students. In this
article, we will look at FOSS-in-the-large as applied to a learning environment.

T
his article is a broad overview
of the technology solutions
available for learning and
does not prejudge any
solution as automatically fitting a particular
requirement. The data gathering and decision
making is left entirely to the reader. If this
and the previous article can spur you to
explore that part of the FOSS ecosystem that
caters to education, they would have served
their purpose.
School infrastructure
A common or default
approach for a
school
computer lab is a network of PCs exclusively
running a proprietary OS with some shared
directories that host the learning resources.
Each student gets a full-fledged PC as a
workstation. What could be easier? There is
always an obliging hardware vendor around
the corner and those helpful education
‘discounts’ on proprietary software are so
tempting.
This approach is wasteful, both in terms
of money and energy (aren't we teaching
children about carbon footprints in our
environmental education classes?). The
software is probably hosted individually on
each machine and maintaining it is a chore,
not to speak of the recurring licence and
upgrade costs.
Contrast this with a FOSS
approach, which has a
high capacity server
for multiple
student

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________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Insight  |  IT Admin

terminals. These could be low-end machines running

Atom-like processors or even old PCs that were heading
for the scrap heap because they could not run some
bloated proprietary OS. All that these terminals (now
functioning as thin clients) need is the capability to boot
from a network. What's more: such a set-up also allows you
to interface Wintel machines from that part of your set-up
that needs a proprietary computing environment.
The advantages of this computing architecture include:
easy software updates (you only require to update the
server/s), potentially lower power requirements, and
enhanced security. All this thanks to the Linux Terminal Figure 1: Koha catalogue at DPL
Server Project (LTSP).
Check out the success stories at ltsp.org for what real deployed at the school level to track attendance, grades,
people are doing with such set-ups. Also, try K12LTSP.org demographics, timetables, and calendars. It does not
for a Linux distribution that bundles LTSP with CentOS, cover accounting. It can also be used by individual
and K12Linux.org for a Fedora distribution that bundles teachers on their laptops to track the classes they are
LTSP with it. teaching, for instance. SchoolTool is backed by the
A software application called iTALC enables you to Shuttleworth Foundation (shuttleworthfoundation.
control all terminals from a central master workstation in org), which works closely with the South African school
the case of a large deployment of terminals. It allows, for system to promote FOSS.
instance, a teacher to give a demo from her terminal and OpenSIS (opensis.com) is a comprehensive SIS that
make it appear on all student terminals. could easily rival commercial offerings. The base system
The FOSS world around Linux also offers other comes free. Additional modules and support can be
technologies to facilitate virtualisation, enhanced security, purchased. There is a hosted service too, in case schools
spam protection, desktop publishing, and a host of other do not want to host their own system. However, the basic
business functions, all in a virus-free environment with a system appears quite adequate to give a clear productivity
range of very functional and attractive graphical desktops. boost to a school's processes.
This by itself would make FOSS a strong contender to OnlineGrades (onlinegrades.org) is not really an
run a school's entire IT infrastructure rather than just the online grade-book, but helps host information on grades
computer lab. But wait till you learn about what else FOSS in a secure manner for controlled access by students
has to offer for a learning environment. and teachers.
Openadmin for Schools is another SIS for schools
Information management
Even small- to medium-sized schools can reap the benefits
of information management. FOSS offers
some sensible options here too. The
list is not complete, and I might
have missed your favourite
application.
SchoolTool
(schooltool.org) calls
itself a student
information
system. It
can be

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IT Admin  |  Insight _________________________________________________________________________________________________________
that has a gamut of features. It has a well-maintained site
and a very active development and release schedule. It
has a surprisingly large number of downloads from India.
There is another SIS that goes by the unpretentious name
of Centre (miller-group.net). But do try out its demo site
because the software functionality and customer support
seems anything but unpretentious.
The Kuali Foundation (kuali.org) has the Kuali
Financial System (KFS), an open source financial package
for institutions of higher learning. They are also working on
a student system. KFS has commercial support available
from established names.
Koha is a popular Integrated Library System (ILS) that
is being used by many libraries in the world including the
Delhi Public Library. It is immensely scalable, making it
amenable for use even by smaller school libraries.
Learning management
The primary purpose of a school is to promote and
facilitate learning. The world of FOSS offers quite a few
applications that help host learning material, making it
accessible to the students in a controlled environment,
and then facilitating the evaluation of students on what
they have learned.
Moodle is a celebrated course management system
(CMS), or learning management system (LMS), with a
large community and almost a fan following. It is feature
rich, allowing you to host your own lesson material and
evaluation tests organised by virtual classrooms.
Figure 2: Moodle courses
Figure 3: Claroline demo
52  |  NOVEMBER 2009  |  LINUX For You  |  www.LinuxForU.com
Figure 4: ATutor demo page
Claroline (claroline.net) is a compact course
management system with some basic exercise types
available for students. It is well suited for light duty
applications such as online orientation for new
employees.
Sakai (sakaiproject.org/portal) is a collaboration
and courseware management platform. It is enterprise
class with support for up to 200,000 users. It is claimed
to be written by educators for educators. Check out the
References section to learn how Stanford University is
using Sakai.
ATutor can be counted with the best amongst the
learning management systems, built with accessibility
and adaptability in mind. With a rich feature list that
takes some time to absorb and a list of useful modules for
expandability, ATutor is a must-have on your evaluation
short list.
LRN (dotlrn.org) is an enterprise class software
solution to support e-learning and to build digital
communities. Most FOSS enterprise class solutions come
with a committed and active community of stakeholders
whom you can interact with for help, feedback, or
plain gyan. LRN, too, is backed by a community of
stakeholders.
ILIAS (ilias.de) is an LMS with German origins and
has a very distinguished cooperation network or advisory
board. Spend some time on the website and you’ll
immediately realise how complete and well documented
it is, besides marvelling at the lengths the developers
have gone to make it accessible and usable. There is a
detailed client list, including some case studies. The latest
stable release is barely a couple of months old. Is it a
candidate for your evaluation short list? You bet.
As an aside, you may not appreciate the value of a
community until you realise that most closed-source
commercial/proprietary products are completely
managed by product management teams of a finite
size. These teams may not necessarily have the user
community as their primary driver due to corporate
compulsions. (We have heard that before, haven't we?).
In contrast, community-driven products, with the greater
wisdom that goes into them, evolve more solidly, and
not necessarily any slower. The evolution of GNU/Linux
________________________________________________________________________________________________________
itself is a good example with a bleeding edge Fedora release
every six months.
A company might withdraw support for a product or
coerce you to upgrade a product that you have invested in,
heavily, and are perfectly happy with in its current version.
You will find no such compulsions with community-driven
FOSS software. Communities do not vanish overnight—
unlike software companies that sometimes do. And even if
a community did vanish, in a worst-case scenario, with the
source code available (remember, this is not closed source)
you have your insurance papers right in the top drawer.
Hosting your own LMS is all very well. You also need
to keep it current and supplied with content. This means
you need to equip qualified lesson authors on your staff
with the right tools. Most LMS have integrated authoring
facilities. However, offline authoring and publishing has its
attractions. It allows people to work in seclusion and then
sync up with the LMS. A tool that enables offline authoring
and publishing is eXe. It allows teachers and academics to
focus on their content rather than the intricacies of HTML.
Most FOSS LMS have no-obligation demo sites. You
can try these demos as often as you want and show them
to the decision makers in your institution. Contrast this
with the time-bound evaluation versions for proprietary
software that give you the feeling that you are being done
a favour.
I am sure you took your school timetable for granted.
Either you remembered it all, at least the days you had two
back-to-back history periods, or just didn't care and carried
all the books you could. I bet you never realised then that
timetabling is a constrained scheduling problem. Throw
in a few thousand students, perhaps a hundred or more
teachers with the usual set of courses, and timetabling
becomes a really complicated business. Fortunately, there
is FET (www.lalescu.ro/liviu/fet). It is a fairly capable tool
with a certain learning curve and can scale very well from
small schools to departments to large institutions. You can
scan the fine-grain, enumerated feature list to check if it
meets your requirements.
Learning by itself would be only half the fun were it not
for the tests. Jokes apart, learning would not be complete
without a reasonable and objective assessment. TCExam
(tcexam.com) is a CBA/CBT (computer-based assessment/
testing) system. It allows you to build a simple testing
strategy. Built on the robust and familiar LAMP (Linux,
Apache, MySQL, PHP/Python/Perl) stack, it supports
rich content in the form of pretty-printed questions,
formulae, and video/audio content. There are i18n
(internationalisation) and accessibility features available
for students with special needs, too. The application
supports question banks so that each candidate gets her
own unique test with a mix of questions. Such a feature is
well suited for administering those on-demand tests that
are very much in the news these days. The strong security
and authentication features allow it to be used on the
extranet as well.
Insight  |  IT Admin
Is it worth a try?
Unless you are already very happy with the information/
learning management systems used in your school,
the answer would be an emphatic, ‘Yes’. That FOSS is a
new technology and learning paradigm that should be
taught to all students is an equally strong reason, in my
opinion. Even if you do not want to jump on to the FOSS
bandwagon with all your baggage, you can evaluate
specific FOSS applications in isolation.
You could sandbox a portion of your computer
lab network and run a small pilot with the active
participation of teachers and students. There is nothing
to lose; there are no evaluation licences or nagging
salesmen spewing words like 'layered' and 'unbundled'.
On the other hand, you might be amazed by how these
solutions—individually or collaboratively—extend
the reach of your teaching function and take the
deployment of your learning course to the next level.
Not to make too fine a point of it, all FOSS
applications have their source code available. This,
along with the four freedoms of FOSS, allows you
to customise and localise the software to your
requirements and also contribute back to the
community. Both of which, the eager, tech-savvy
students of today would love doing. However, most, if
not all the applications we have discussed so far seem to
be usable out-of-the-box.
Do make sure, however, that you engage good technical
help for the required handholding. And do not forget to
familiarise yourself with the vocabulary used in the LMS
domain. Is there a role for a 'Chief Education Officer' in
institutions? Continuing education is the shape of things
to come; perhaps it is not just coincidence that this role
abbreviates to CEO! Fortunately, this role already exists in
some organisations as Chief Learning Officer; so the real
CEOs can breathe easy.
Once you start your journey, you might realise that
it is not so much about technologies or paradigms as
much as it is about prejudice, nay-sayers, entrenched
mindsets, and commercial vested interests. Learning is
all about discovery and breaking new ground. When are
you starting on your voyage of discovery on what FOSS
has to offer the world of education? 
References
• http://www.rsmart.com/case/stanford-university-sakai-
provides-significant-potential-and-opportunity
• Screenshots are taken from demolabo.com, which runs
demos of many packages and offers content under the cc-
by-sa licence
By: Gurudutt Talgery
The author is an open source enthusiast and practitioner with
over 20 years of industry experience working with reputed
transnational companies. You can contact Gurudutt on gtalgery
AT rediffmail DOT com
www.LinuxForU.com  |  LINUX For You  |  NOVEMBER 2009  |  53
Open Gurus  |  Overview ____________________________________________________________________________________________

Turbo
Boost
your PC
ark in g an d
Benchm Linu x
verclockin g in
O

Are you ready

to raise the bar?
Ready to witness a
performance from
your PC that you’d
not seen in years?
Then tighten your seat
belt, grab a chilled
drink and get ready
to exhaust the tower
with the monstrous
benchmarks!
54  |  NOVEMBER 2009  |  LINUX For You  |  www.LinuxForU.com
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
M
ost PCs today—i.e., if you own a processor like
the AMD Athlon (90/65nm) or Core 2 Duo and
above—come with decent headroom to increase
performance. The question is: have you ever
considered pushing the limits?
If so, tighten your seat belt, because in this article we
will not only learn about torturing the hardware, but also
unravel the facts about overclocking your hardware and the
status of benchmarking in Linux.
Note: Overclocking is raising the clock speed of the
processor from the factory settings. Benchmarking, on
the other hand, is an assessment test to measure the
capacity of the hardware at your disposal.
Some of you must be mulling over what Linux has to
do with overclocking? Well, yes, the operating system has
very little to do with overclocking. But when you pump
up the speed of your system, then various things need to
be considered. The operating system chips in by offering
various monitoring tools and other requisites.
Note that this tutorial will only guide you with the
basics of overclocking. Since it's a very vast topic, and
the overclocking options vary from motherboard to
motherboard and the BIOSs they come with, more details
are out of scope of this article.
Statutory warning: Overclocking is fun to begin
with, but reckless decisions can bring your whole
system down. The author and the publisher will not be
responsible for any damage caused, and what's worse is
that afterwards, you will not be covered by the product
warranty either. So, you'll need to remember one thing—
slow and steady wins the race.
The only precautionary measure is not to take
hasty decisions—stay calm, and nothing will go wrong.
The fact is, overclocking is highly addictive, so beware
and don't let your excitement overtake you. Because
once you get overexcited, you will surely end up doing
something wrong.
Now that we're done with the warnings and introductory
notes, let’s move on. Overclocking requires a few tools and
utilities as well. But for what, you may ask? As I mentioned
earlier, overclocking needs to be done through the BIOS. Yes,
the best and rudimentary way to overclock is from BIOS.
However, once you have overclocked the system, there are
several factors that need to be dealt with.
The most important is the temperature. Temperature
plays a vital role in the life of silicon. All the diodes/chips/
processors are made using silicon, so the temperature must
be kept under control. We will get to know more about it
later. But before that we need some software to monitor
certain things for us.
Overview  |  Open Gurus
Unfortunately, the software potpourri isn't as diverse
as that of Windows, but still, there is a decent amount of
benchmarking and monitoring software available for Linux.
In this article we will take a look at the following:
1. Hardinfo: A one-stop shop for all the monitoring
utilities in Linux
2. Phoronix Text Suite: Undoubtedly, a vast and the most
popular benchmarking suite for Linux
3. Geekbench: Another cross-platform benching program
4. Prime95B: A CPU stress-testing program
The test set-up used for overclocking and benchmarking
is described below:
 AMD Phenom II Dual Core X2 550 Black Edition
processor (unlocked to Phenom II Quad Core X4 B50),
with 45nm fabrication and socket AM3
 Jetway Ha07 790GX AM2+ motherboard
 Transcend DDR2 800 MHz 4GB kit @ 5-5-5-15/dual
channel
 Western Digital 640AAKS Blue Edition hard disk drive
 Prolimatech Megahalems + Scythe Sflex 120mm 75cfm
fan (CPU heat sink and fan)
 Corsair VX450 SMPS | open air system
 Operating systems: Ubuntu 9.04 64-bit and Mandriva
2009.1 32-bit
Benchmarking your PC
Before we get started, we should know about the types of
benchmarking. There are many benchmarking applications
and methods to test the system. These are generally
segregated into the following two categories:
1. Real-world benchmarking: All benchmarking of real
tests such as FPS ( frames per second) in games, the time
to compile software/the kernel, the encoding/decoding
time of media files, etc, fall under this category. This is
perhaps a more practical way to judge a PC's calibre.
Most benchmarking software don't cater to real-world
benchmarking; thus, these tests are done by using the
computer on a daily basis.
2. Synthetic benchmarking: All software and tests
designed to appraise the system potential are termed
as synthetic benchmarking software. These are good
to obtain quick results, and one doesn't need to waste
much time running tests, one by one. However, some
of the software tends to favour certain brands and
products. For example, the Super PI test favours Intel
processors while the AES benchmarking favours AMD
processors. Thus, these are not always the premier
solution to judge a PC's potential.
Hardinfo
Sleuth tools let you obtain crucial information about
your hardware. These tools not only provide valuable
information but also prove to be viable alternatives to digital
multimeters and power calculators. Unfortunately, there
aren't many alternatives available on the Linux platform,
and this is where Hardinfo chips in to provide the perfect
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Open Gurus  |  Overview ___________________________________________________________________________________________________
Figure 1: Hardinfo Benchmark
blend between a hardware listing and a
decent benchmarking tool.
Hardinfo [http://hardinfo.berlios.
de/HomePage] delivers precise details
about the hardware installed and the
connected devices atop an easy-to-
use GUI. The website claims that the
tool “…can gather information about
your system's hardware and operating
system, perform benchmarks, and
generate printable reports either in
HTML or in plain text formats.”
The app's interface is segregated
into two columns. The left column
serves as the navigation bar that
consists of a plethora of hardware
categories, which are further divided
into relevant entries. The section on
the right side is the overview panel
that displays some information
about the entries you select from the
navigation panel. When you select
an entry, a new panel is created to
show detailed information about the
selected item.
Apart from its hardware listing
capabilities, Hardinfo provides a
handful of benchmarking tests to
put your system through rigorous
exercises. The default installation
doesn't come with much data on the
benchmarking front to compare your
system with other hardware. However,
you can easily sync with the online
database (click Information→Network
Updater). Updating the database adds
the data of the computers that have
been tested.
Sharing data online and then
syncing the software is really a great
idea and lets you easily compare
56  |  NOVEMBER 2009  |  LINUX For You  |  www.LinuxForU.com
Figure 2: Hardinfo Default Looks
your system’s potential with others.
I advise you to sync the system with
the online service, once. This not only
increases the size of the hardware
database, but is beneficial for others as
well. Hardinfo also provides a Report
Generator. This handy plug-in allows
you to generate system information
along with benchmarking results,
either in HTML or plain test format.
This information about the system
will provide a verbose report covering
the X server, the Linux distribution,
hot-swappable devices, network
information and lots more. It even
displays the temperature using the
system diode; however, I found that
to be faulty—my motherboard LED
indicator displayed a significantly
lower temperature than that of
Hardinfo.
Nevertheless, there are still many
things missing from the elusive
Hardinfo. Shortcomings include the
missing voltage meter, dynamic speed
reader, and many more. A dearth
of these components is surely a big
setback for any hardware listing tool,
Figure 3: PTS System Overview
and without these tools one cannot
make proper judgements while
overclocking.
The Phoronix Test Suite
Phoronix Media, one of the most
popular and reliable sources for Linux
news and reviews, presented the
first benchmarking test suite—the
Phoronix Test Suite (PTS). Phoronix
regularly publishes hardware/Linux
benchmarking reviews using PTS,
which throw some light on what PTS
is capable of doing. Initially restricted
to the CLI, PTS goes through massive
transitions from release to release.
It has now jumped onto the GUI
bandwagon, loaded with an easy-
to-use GUI. It comes with support
for almost all distributions and is
available in the repositories of many
distributions.
I'd say Phoronix takes
benchmarking to a whole new
level, being the only one of its kind
that provides users the option of
‘live benchmarking’ (thanks to the
availability of an Ubuntu-based live
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
DVD). So all you need is a system with a DVD drive to enjoy
the test suite.
Installing it is very easy and you can do so by using
your system repositories or the executables provided at
the project website. PTS actually acts as a wrapper for
many open source/proprietary software that are available
off-the-shelf.
By default, PTS doesn't come with a single benchmarking
utility installed; rather, it provides an option to install them
the way you want. In order to get the most out of PTS, you
have to install the tests, one by one. Some tests are as huge
as 700 MB, and thus installation can be a bother. It would
be much better if Phoronix additionally allowed users to
install multiple tests in a single click, with options like ‘Tests
for Processors’, ‘Tests for the GPU’, and so on. The pack
must consist of a handful of relevant tests that fall under the
particular category the user is interested in.
Phoronix allows users to easily upload their results to
Phoronix Global. This is a portal where you can view your
results (the same way you view them offline), and from
where you can make comparisons with others. In fact, the
application itself prompts you to compare the result with
the tests that Phoronix developers have uploaded. A very
nice approach that does away with the hassle of searching
for the test results to compare with your outcome.
Phoronix also provides a small system ‘overviewer’ that
keeps you informed about hardware, software and sensors.
Things are very neatly arranged in their proper categories. It
even allows you to copy all the data to clipboards and then
share them easily. However, in my case, it failed to detect the
IGP (on-board graphics) speed. The system memory usage
data was displayed incorrectly as well.
The downside of PTS is that there is no notification
whatsoever while installing and running tests. Once you
initiate the process, the PTS window will vanish and the
user has no idea of what's happening in the background.
Even though it was mentioned that support with Ubuntu
notification has been added, it didn’t work in Ubuntu 9.04
64-bit. Instead, a simple status message on the PTS window
should have sufficed.
Geekbench
Geekbench is another efficient benchmarking software for
Linux. Despite claiming to be cross-platform software, it
only provides a GUI for Windows and Mac, leaving Linux
Overview  |  Open Gurus
with a CLI offering. Nonetheless, the application offers a
complete benchmarking solution capable of wrenching the
most out of your CPU and memory.
The Linux version is an easy to execute binary file that
runs from the terminal. After executing it, the benchmarking
will commence and automatically complete all the tests.
In the end, it will ask you to submit the data, online. If you
have a working Internet connection, you can easily submit
the data and add it to your profile (if you have an account).
Pretty nifty indeed!
The online score browser displays scores in coloured
charts—this is where you can compare your scores as well.
Unlike other benchmarking software, this one gives an
overall score to the system providing a rough idea of what
the system is capable of.
Compared to the other two benchmarking utilities
mentioned, Geekbench is not an open source application,
although the developers have open sourced the detection
engine (geekinfo) under the MIT licence. The detection
engine seems to be flaky—it fails to detect my motherboard
manufacturer and model. Apart from that, it failed to even
detect the operating system used. It only showed the kernel
under use instead of the distro. Since Geekbench developers
want you to buy the software, they have restricted the
availability of the 64-bit executable.
One of the biggest drawbacks was the overall
inconsistency in scores. I tested Geekbench in all the
supported OSs, namely OSX, Windows and several
distributions, keeping the hardware intact across every
OS. Initially developed for Mac OS, Geekbench still favours
that OS by delivering the highest scores on it. The claims of
providing an OS-neutral benchmarking engine seem hollow,
and the statements are contradictory to the scores.
Benefits of benchmarking
Many of you must be muttering about all this information
on benchmarking. Why waste resources? Why go through
such trouble and waste time just for a few numbers? Well,
because benchmarking is the easiest way to gauge your
system. Today, all system components—be it the CPU,
memory, hard drive, graphics adapters, power supply, etc—are
thoroughly benchmarked and tested, and then, accordingly,
manufacturers rank them by price and performance.
Benchmarking creates a sense of judgement among
users. It keeps you updated about the potential of
www.LinuxForU.com  |  LINUX For You  |  NOVEMBER 2009  |  57
Open Gurus  |  Overview ___________________________________________________________________________________________________

Jargon Buster
 Clock speed: This is the speed at which your processor
runs under factory settings, and is calculated in Gigahertz
(GHz) or Megahertz (MHz). The clock speed is generally
obtained from the product of FSB/HTT/BCLK and CPU
multiplier. Note that whether it’s FSB, HTT or BCLK depends
on the type of processor you own.
 FSB (Front Side Bus): This acts as a main bus speed
for the processor, RAM, northbridge and southbridge. The
FSB lies in the motherboard and has a memory controller
alongside it.
 HTT (Hyper Transport Technology): This is the new
generation of FSBs that are used by AMD processors. HTT
is nothing but the FSB, excluding a memory controller. In
AMD processors, the memory controller lies inside the
processor, and that provides more flexibility throughout; as
a result, AMD processors support multiple memory types.
For example, Phenom II, Athlon II and Sempron 140 (i.e.,
the 45nm series of AMD processors) have multiple memory
controllers within, allowing them to use either DDR2 or
DDR3 at a time.
 BCLK (Base Clock): This is a refined FSB that has been
developed for Intel processors and debuted with the Core
i7 series of processors. The BCLK is nothing but AMD's
HTT. The processor comes with the memory controller.
Previously, all Intel processors— Pentium, Core2Duo, or
Core2Quad—had the FSB, which limited their memory
handling capabilities. With Core i7, Intel has now a memory
controller merged within the CPU itself and with triple
channel support providing humongous bandwidth.
 CPU multiplier: As mentioned earlier, this value when
multiplied with the FSB/HTT/BCLK, gives the processor's
clock speed. And since the Special Edition processors
have the multiplier unlocked, they allow processor
overclocking. Thus, you don't have to tinker with the
FSB/HTT/BCLK if you have a Special Edition processor.
However, you are even free to take the FSB/HTT/BCLK
route if you want.
 Integrated memory controller: This determines the
speed, type, channel and the amount of memory that can be
installed in the system. With new processors, the memory
controller is now merged into the processor. As a result,
you don't have to change the processor in order to utilise
newer and faster memory, if supported. For example, the
new 45nm Phenom II from AMD comes with a dual memory
controller allowing you to use either DDR2 or DDR3. So you
can put the processor in an AM2+ board and use DDR2, or
in an AM3 board to use DDR3. This gives a wide spectrum
of options to users either to opt for the high-performance
DDR3 or the value for money DDR2. As a result of multi-
channel memory, motherboard manufacturers release
hybrid boards with both DDR2 and DDR3 slots. So all you
need to do is buy one board and RAM of your choice. If,
in future, you want to make the transition from DDR2 to
DDR3, then you don't have to buy a new motherboard.
This contrasts with processors like Intel Core2Duo or the
Pentium series, which had the memory controller on board.
Thus, in order to get a higher performance RAM, you need
to change the motherboard, which adds to costs.
 CPU core voltage (VCORE): In order to gain a stable
clock speed (which works 24x7 under a full load, without
any problem) we need to increase the voltage applied to
the processor. By applying more voltage, we give more
power to operate. More power generates more heat, and
thus we must opt for a good after-market CPU cooler if you
are aiming for higher clocks.
 Memory speed: Once you overclock your system by
tinkering with the FSB, HTT, or BCLK, you substantially
overclock other components as well. All the other
components like memory, northbridge and southbridge,
thrive on FSB, HTT or BCLK for their own clock speeds.
So once you change the relevant BUS, you overclock the
whole system. Memory is affected as well. Memory speed
is determined by the product of FSB/HTT/BCLK and the
memory multiplier. Note that just like the CPU multiplier,
memory too has its own multiplier.

your hardware. You can check
benchmarking journals to keep
yourself updated with all the reviews
of the new hardware flowing into the
market. Whatever said and done, it is a
perfect option to test your hardware.
Amplify speed by
overclocking hardware
Overclocking is like losing weight—
the initial results come very fast,
but the last pounds (read MHz) take
some real effort.
Almost all the hardware
components can be overclocked. This
is due to the fact that most of the
components are interlinked and work
in synchronisation. Since this requires
tweaking the system above the factory
settings, it means increasing the power
consumption, heat dissipation and
many other factors. So before we get
started, here are the mandatory things
that need to be dealt with:
1. Exterminating dust:
Accumulation of dust decreases
a component's life span and
performance, while decreasing
the heat dissipation. Dust traps
the heat and does not allow it
to dissipate properly. It is very
important to keep the dust away.
So, open the cabinet and clean all
components. Cleaning reduces
noise, components run cool and
hence their performance increases,
significantly increasing headroom
for overclocking. Make sure you are
properly grounded, else the static

58  |  NOVEMBER 2009  |  LINUX For You  |  www.LinuxForU.com

__________________________________________________________________________________________________
electricity from your body can
damage the hardware components.
2. Airflow: Airflow plays a vital part
in overclocking. A good airflow can
decrease temperature drastically
while bad/misaligned airflow
can be fatal. Cabinets now come
with at least two fans—one intake
( front) and one exhaust (back).
Usually, 120mm fans are preferred.
Airflow is generally measured in
CFM (cubic feet/metre). The more
the CFM, the better the fan and
its airflow. Few of the good brands
are Scythe, Silverstone, Xigmatek,
Antec, etc.
3. Thermal compounds: Also
known as thermal pastes, thermal
compounds are an important
factor in cooling CPUs and GPUs.
They transfer heat to the heat
sink. A good thermal compound
can reduce temperatures by
2-5 degrees Celsius. Some of the
known brands are Arctic Cooling,
Tuniq, etc.
4. Cable management: Messy
cables inside the PC can hinder
airflow, thus increasing the
temperature. Cables hovering over
the components can suffocate
them resulting in their failure.
So it’s better to tie them, keeping
them aside and away from the
components' blowing/intake vents.
You can use el cheapo cable ties to
get the best results. If you want a
permanent solution, cable covers
and management kits are available
off-the-shelf.
Warning: Although this guide
encourages you to experiment with
overclocking, I highly condemn
the practice with laptops and
desktops loaded with Pentium 4
(any generation) or Pentium D.
These components usually run very
hot and overclocking can result in
system fiasco.
As I’ve mentioned earlier,
overclocking is a vast topic, but in
this article, we will only focus on
CPU overclocking and not consider
GPUs due to the dearth of mature
Overview  |  Open Gurus
After-market heat sinks
Most hardware components suffer from the repercussions of overheating and
other thermal catastrophes because of heat generation. Therefore we use heat
sinks which helps in absorbing heat and keep the temperature from rising above
safe levels.
To attain a higher CPU clock speed with well-controlled temperature, many
companies offer after-market coolers. Most of the manufacturers allow high
scalability by providing compatibility across all sockets of AMD and Intel.
Therefore, even if you change the platform in future, you can continue to use
the cooler, if compatible, or can increase the compatibility by spending on the
mounting kit, if provided. Some of the top brands in the market are Thermalright,
Prolimatech, Scythe, Artic Cooler, Coolermaster, etc.
If you intend to buy a cooler, then here is the list of some coolers that you can
get for varying budgets:
 Rs 1000-1,400: OCZ Vanquishes 120mm (comes with fan installed)
 Rs 1,500-2,000: Thermalright Ultima 90 (doesn't include a fan) | Coolermast
Hyper TX2 Super (comes with fan)
 Rs 2,000-2,500: Sunbeam Core Contact Freezer 120mm | OCZ Vendatta 2
(both include a fan)
 Rs 3,000 and above: Thermalright Ultra Extreme 120mm | Prolimatech
Megahalems (both don't come with a fan)
overclocking software for them. pocket and a dual core is available for
CPU overclocking varies from under Rs 6000. On the other hand, you
processor to processor. Intel and AMD will have to spend around Rs 50,000 for
follow different approaches towards Intel's Extreme Editions. Yes, that's half
overclocking. To make things a little a lakh for only a processor.
more complicated, CPU manufacturers Take a look at the box to become
opt for new terminology, which is often familiar with some of the jargon used
nothing more than a gimmick. Things in relation to CPUs.
are not as different as they seem. So once you have gained
There are generally multiple some knowledge about the basic
ways to overclock—manufacturers terminology used while overclocking,
provide many options to boost speed. it’s time to overclock the system.
Generally, there are two types of Generally, the preferred way to
processors available in the market: one overclock the system is by tweaking
with the locked multiplier (refer to the the BIOS settings. Refer to your
sidebox titled “Jargon buster”) and the motherboard manual for precise
other is with an unlocked multiplier. information—different motherboard
Processors with unlocked multipliers manufacturers have different BIOS
fall into a special category and are menu structures.
often termed as ‘Special Editions’. Intel We will start by disabling some
uses the term Extreme Edition and energy efficient technologies that
AMD's offerings are known as Black chip giants have actuated in the chips
Editions. themselves. Here is the list of options
Both these special edition that need to be disabled:
processors are cherry-picked, and have  AMD Cool n' Quiet: This is a
the best die and unlocked multipliers power-saving technology that
in them. As usual, they come with a lowers the CPU clock speed and
premium in price. Thankfully, AMD's voltage when the processor is
Black Edition won't burn a hole in your idle. This keeps the CPU from
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Open Gurus  |  Overview ___________________________________________________________________________________________________

System buying guide heating up uselessly and reduces

the electricity consumption. In the
Here is a list of systems with fairly decent overclocking headroom: course of overclocking, we will be
disabling CnQ if you have an AMD
Budget System, around Rs 15,000 processor.
 AMD C1E: AMD C1E is a power
 AMD Athlon II X2 250..........................................................................Rs 4,000 management feature that suspends
 Biostar A785GW – (ATI HD4200 Integrated Graphics)...........................Rs 3,200 the system once it is idle.
 Transcend 2GB DDR2 800 MHz RAM...................................................Rs 1,200  Intel SpeedStep: Intel SpeedStep
 Western Digital 320 GB Sata2 Hard Disk.............................................Rs 2,200 is similar to AMD CnQ. Likewise,
it reduces the system’s power
 Samsung/LG DVD Writer......................................................................Rs 1,200
consumption by lowering the
 Gigabyte Superb 460W SMPS.............................................................Rs 2,200 processor speed, when not in use.
 Zebronics Bijli.....................................................................................Rs 1,200 Once you have disabled all
 OCZ Vanquishes AMD Edition (Optional)...............................................Rs 1,200 the energy efficient techniques,
Total........................................................................................ Rs 16,400 it's time to start our business.
Overclocking generally depends
on the motherboard's capacity
Mid End System, around Rs 20,000-27,000
and capabilities; the better the
 AMD Phenom II X2 550 Black Edition..................................................Rs 4,900 motherboard, the better the processor
 Biostar T790GXBE...............................................................................Rs 4,400 will overclock. Of course, you need a
capable processor, nonetheless.
 4GB Gskill PI Black DDR2 800 MHz RAM.............................................Rs 3,400
To begin with, head on to the
 Western Digital 1TB Green Hard Disk...................................................Rs 4,200 overclocking section of your BIOS
 Samsung/LG/Lite On DVD Writer..........................................................Rs 1,200 (refer to the BIOS manual to locate
 Corsair CX400 | Seasonics 380W SMPS..............................................Rs 3,200 this) and increase the FSB/HTT/BCLK
 Antec 300 Cabinet...............................................................................Rs 3,400 by 2-5. If you have a special edition
 Thermalright Ultima 90.......................................................................Rs 1,900 processor, then increase the multiplier
by 1 from the default and save it.
 Scythe Sflex 65cfm 120mm fan.............................................................Rs 500
Return to Linux, and run the stress-
Total:....................................................................................... Rs 27,100 testing program (we will learn about
this later). If you have no errors or
Mid End System Alternatives system performance issues, it means
you have attained a stable overclock.
 AMD Athlon II X4 620 Quad Core...................................Rs 5,500
Slowly and steadily, increase the value
 Coolermaster CM590 Cabinet.......................................Rs 3,800 until you get to the point where the
 ATI HD4850 | nvidia GTS 250 (512MB) VGA adapter.....Rs 7,000 system stops responding. Kindly note,
we have not yet increased the voltage
Mid-High End AMD System of the system.
Once you have reached the limit,
 AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition................................................Rs 11,000 it’s time to increase the voltage. A
 MSI GDFX-70......................................................................................Rs 9,500 word of caution: Do not escalate the
 OCZ AMD Black Edition Memory 4GB DDR3 1333 MHz RAM............. ~Rs 6,000 voltage value or you might end up with
 Western Digital 1TB Black Edition Hard drive.......................................Rs 5,400 a fried CPU! Start by increasing from
 nvidia GTX 260.................................................................~Rs 10,000-11,000 0.05V and then continue increasing
the BUS speed/multiplier till you get
 Samsung/LG/Lite On DVD Writer..........................................................Rs 1,200
the maximum stable speed. Note: do
 Corsair TX650 | HX620 (modular) SMPS....................... ~Rs 6,500 | ~Rs 8,000 not increase the voltage if you're using
 Lancool PCK62 Cabinet.......................................................................Rs 7,000 the factory shipped heat sink to cool
 Thermalright Ultra Extreme Black........................................................Rs 3,400 the processor. Those cooling solutions
 Sycthe Sflex 75Cfm 120mm...................................................................Rs 500 are barely enough to cool the factory-
shipped system, and increasing voltage
Total:....................................................................................... Rs 60,500
on the default cooler might result in
Continued on next page… a dead processor. See the box titled
‘After-market heat sinks’ to get an idea

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__________________________________________________________________________________________________
of the range of coolers that you might
consider.
For a 65nm/45nm processor, you
should aim for at least a 300-400 MHz
stable overclock on stock cooling,
while people with good cooling should
aim for 600 MHz or even 1GHz.
Once you have attained a stable
clock, keep it running 24x7 and
notice the temperature while stress-
testing; make sure it doesn't cross the
maximum temperature allotted by the
CPU manufacturer.
Stress testing/Prime95
Prime95 is the only efficient stress-
testing program available for Linux,
although the Linux version doesn't
have a GUI. This test stresses the
components and thus reveals any
frailty. A stress-testing program
stresses the CPU by upping the load
to 100 per cent of the CPU cores. The
processor will thus be overworked
and the temperature will rise. If
the overclock attained is unstable,
the system might restart or stop
responding while stress testing. This is
a great way to check the stability of the
system after overclocking.
Factors that affect overclocking
Even if you are well versed with the
overclocking techniques, there is no
guarantee that you will get the same
results. Overclocking depends and
varies with situations and the types of
hardware components you use. So, I’d
recommend extensive research before
buying any of these components.
Let’s take a quick look at what
we should focus on before buying
our hardware. Note that the dealers,
most of the time, are uninformed
and often have vested interests when
they promote a product. So, do your
homework on hardware peripherals
before you buy them.
Conclusion
The benchmarking scenario is
slowly and steadily improving in
Linux. However, the clear lack of
software potpourri does hurt. None
of the programs tested provide an
unblemished experience. For starters,
Overview  |  Open Gurus
Continued from previous page… System buying guide
Mid-High End Intel System
 Intel Core i5 750 (LGA 1156).............................................................Rs 11,000
 Gigabyte P55 UD3R...........................................................................Rs 13,000
 Corsair XMS3 4GB DDR3 1333 MHz RAM......................................... ~Rs 6,500
 Western Digital 1TB Black Edition Hard drive.......................................Rs 5,400
 nvidia GTX 260.................................................................~Rs 10,000-11,000
 Samsung/LG/Lite On DVD Writer..........................................................Rs 1,200
 Corsair TX650 | HX620 (modular) SMPS........................ ~Rs 6,500 | ~Rs 8,000
 Lancool PCK62 Cabinet.......................................................................Rs 7,000
 Prolimatech Megahalem + LGA1156 Mounting Bracket.................... ~Rs 4,200
 Scythe Sflex 75cfm 120mm...................................................................Rs 500
Total: (with HX620 SMPS)........................................... Rs 65,300 | Rs 66,800
Mid-High End Alternatives
 ATI Radeon HD4890................................................. ~Rs 10,000
 AMD – AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition...............Rs 13,000
 Intel – Intel Core i7 860................................. Rs 14,000-15,000
High End System
 Intel Core i7 920 (LGA1366)..............................................................Rs 15,000
 Gigabyte EAX58 UD5p.......................................................................Rs 18,000
 Corsair XMS3 6GB DDR3 1333 Triple Channel RAM.............................Rs 9,000
 Western Digital 1Tb Black Edition Hard Drive x2................................Rs 11,000
 ATI HD5850.......................................................................................Rs 17,000
 Samsung/LG/Lite On DVD Writer..........................................................Rs 1,200
 Corsair TX750W SMPS........................................................................Rs 9,000
 Lian Li A71F Cabinet.........................................................................Rs 16,000
 Prolimatech Megahalem................................................................... ~Rs 3,500
 Scythe Sflex 75cfm 120mm ..................................................................Rs 500
Total:..................................................................................... Rs 100,200
Note: All prices mentioned are courtesy deltapage.com, theitwares.com and primeabgb.com. The prices are
quoted in INR and would vary depending on dealer discounts and product availability.
there are no overclocking software Nonetheless, the benchmarking
for CPUs, while there are a bunch of scenario is improving and will
overclocking utilities for GPUs. The continue to do so since there is a
NVIDIA Control Panel does allow sudden shift towards Linux. Stay
you to increase the memory and core tuned. 
speeds, while the AMD Overdrive is
stagnating with no GUI on top. The
lack of proper voltage and temperature By: Shashwat Pant
measuring utilities is getting to be a sore The author is a FOSS enthusiast
interested in QT programming and
point. Even with LM_Sensors and many
technology. He is fond of reviewing the
other sensors, temperature monitoring latest OSS tools and distros.
isn't as precise as it should be.
www.LinuxForU.com  |  LINUX For You  |  NOVEMBER 2009  |  61
Open Gurus  |  How To _______________________________________________________________________________________________

ur Own
ake Yo

Medi
M
a Centre
...in Under Rs 30,000
Sounds too good to be true? Read on to find out how to make your LCD/plasma
TV so much more interesting that you’ll forget you have a job.

H
ave a large screen TV? I’m
talking about full HD LCD or
plasma models. If you do, you’ll
see that TV broadcasts all over
India (even in DTH services) are broadcast
only in 720p (excepting some HD broadcasts
on Reliance BIG TV and Sun Direct). What
a waste! And so, with only Blu-ray delivering
true HD content, it looks like all those 1080p
pixels are going to waste.
But wait! What if you replace your Blu-ray
player with a computer and a HDTV tuner
card? Suddenly, things become interesting.
Imagine all the things that you can do with
it. Play games at very high resolutions! Watch
TV and Blu-rays! Listen to MP3s, watch all
those XviD movies, see pictures on the TV
instead of on the computer or the crammed
LCD of the camera, get weather info,
synopses of the movie that you are watching,
IMDB ratings, cover art...
It looks like this dream is set to become
a reality!
The hardware
I presume you already have a HDTV that
can connect via HDMI. It would also be an
added bonus if you have a 7.1 or at least a 5.1
speaker system.
Okay! Time to list out some hardware:

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____________________________________________________________________________________________________ How To  |  Open Gurus

 AMD Athelon II X2 240, 2.8GHz

 GIGABYTE GA-MA785GT-UD3H motherboard
(AMD 785G chipset)
 Transcend JetRAM DDR3-1333 2GBx1
 Nvidia GeForce 9400GT 1GB (more on this, later)
 Western Digital Caviar 7200RPM 1TB SATA hard drive
 Lite-On iHES208 Blu-ray Reader/DVD writer
This entire thing should cost you around Rs 21,000.
The Blu-ray drive costs Rs 8,200, but is a pain to procure
in India. If you can’t find it, Sony has one that costs Rs
16,000 (just double Lite-On’s price). I went with Nvidia’s
9400GT (the 1GB model) because at this moment, Linux Figure 1: XBMC Home Screen
support for AMD/ATI’s Avivo HD is a bit unpredictable,
whereas Nvidia’s VDPAU works like a charm. On the
other hand, if you plan to dual boot Windows and play
Crysis at 1080p, you’ll need to put in a 1GB ATI Radeon
HD4870, which is a heat factory and costs Rs 14,000.
The next part of the shopping list includes the
materials for our TV and remote controls: Hauppage
WinTV-HVR-1800 D/A HD TV tuner card (it’s a bit on
the higher end).
It’s difficult to recommend a specific remote
to control your computer with, as remote control
availability matters. If all else fails, you can get an IR
receiver and use your Tata Sky remote rather creatively, Figure 2: Playing an HD movie in XBMC
training LIRC manually to recognise your remote. Why
do you need a remote? When you are using your media them according to your convenience.
centre app, you wouldn’t exactly like using a mouse and The two PCIe x16 slots are meant for CrossFireX,
a keyboard from your couch... but single Nvidia cards do not have any problem on an
The TV tuner is an analogue/digital HDTV tuner, AMD chipset. You won’t be able to SLI, however. On
which can receive signals from normal coaxial cable the upside, you have a free PCIe x16 slot that can be
connections (analogue) or your set-top box as well used by all PCIe cards.
(digital). Additionally, it has an FM tuner. Enjoy... You’ll need Internet connectivity on this machine. But
You’ll need a keyboard and mouse as well—try due to the lack of a normal UI (GNOME, KDE, etc) you
laying your hands on the Microsoft Wireless Desktop won’t be able to connect manually through PPPoE, dial-
Combo 800, because at Rs 1400, a wireless mouse and up or even through a browser. Your connection needs to
keyboard with a 10 metre range is a steal. be ‘always-on’.
As for a case, naturally, since it’s going to lie in
front of your living room TV, you’ll want something A little theory
pretty; preferably lying down, rather than a tower Okay, here goes. Have you heard of 10-foot interfaces?
case. However, please don’t go overboard, because These are user interfaces that have been designed with
the Nvidia card needs a bit of cooling, as does AMD’s large elements that can be comfortably used by people
processors. You may want a third-party SMPS as sitting up to 10 feet away from the screen. 10-foot
well—a Corsair VX450 will cost you around Rs 4,100. interfaces are almost exclusively used by media
This ensures better stability. centre apps.
And what are media centre apps? Technically, they
Pepping the rig provide a homogeneous 10-foot interface that represents
It’s a little difficult to find a Nvidia GeForce 9400GT a uniform way to access all the digital media in the
with HDMI output. Luckily, the DVI connector on the computer, either in hard disks or any removable media.
card is HDCP compliant and thus a DVI-to-HDMI cable One of the best media centre apps in Linux is the XBox
can be used to connect your TV to the card. The digital Media Center, or XBMC. A review has been published in
signal used in DVI and HDMI is the same, so there is no LFY recently, and this article puts it to good use.
impact on the quality. However, you won’t get any sound Technically, your plasma (or LCD) screen is just a
on the TV, so you’ll need to mute it. monitor as far your PC is concerned. To be able to run
The motherboard has all the audio you can ask for: A XBMC, your TV must support either 720p, 1080p or
2-channel front panel and a 7.1-channel rear panel. Use any standard VGA resolution. Support for interlaced

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Open Gurus  |  How To _ ____________________________________________________________________________________________________
Figure 3: Commercial Break Tagging on MythBox
Figure 4: MythBox’s Watch TV Interface
resolutions (720i and 1080i) is rather flaky at the moment.
One last hurdle is that if you have a DTH service,
chances are your set-top box connects to your TV
through component (Y/Pb/Pr) cables (3-plug adapters).
Even if your TV tuner card supports this type of input,
support on Linux is flaky, or even non-existent in some
cases. Also, since there is no way to change channels
using the computer—it must be done on the STB—
you’ll have trouble doing scheduled recordings. So I’d
recommend connecting the STB separately — directly
to the TV (keep the STB on A/V, while the computer is
on HDMI).
Setting up the mammoth
First of all, you might try christening this media centre.
XBMC 9.04.1 is codenamed Babylon, so you could try
christening the PC Mesopotamia ;-) Anyway, once you
have set up the hardware, start up the PC and install
Ubuntu 9.04 on it. It doesn’t matter whether you are using
32- or 64-bit, but 64-bit should give better performance.
Something you might try doing is keeping three
separate partitions and mounting them under /
XBMCVideos, /XBMCMusic and /XBMCPictures, and
then dumping your movies, songs and pictures into them,
respectively. It keeps the stuff in one place, and that helps
in organisation. Remember you won’t be able to browse
for files on these machines, you will only be able to see
your media repositories ( folders that you designate) and
removable drives.
64  |  NOVEMBER 2009  |  LINUX For You  |  www.LinuxForU.com
You’ll need up to 60GB of /tmp space because in case
your Blu-rays are encrypted, the entire disk has to be
decrypted and copied over until you can watch it.
Once Ubuntu is installed, install the Nvidia drivers by
typing the following command in a terminal:
sudo apt-get install nvidia-glx-180 nvidia-settings
After that, enable the drivers from System→
Administration→Hardware Drivers, and reboot the
system. You should now get the maximum resolution
that your TV supports (hopefully 1080p). Bingo! The first
segment of the project is complete.
Now install all the multimedia codecs by typing in the
following:
sudo apt-get install gstreamer0.10-{lame, ffmpeg, fluendo-mp3} \
gstreamer0.10-plugins-{bad, ugly}
That will pull in all native back-ends as well as the
FFMPEG back-end (which enables use of libavcodec), so
you can now play all media formats without exception.
Update all the software by running the following code.
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade
It’s time for XBMC. Go to System→Administration→
Software Sources. Switch to the Third-Party Software tab
and press Add. Type in:
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/team-xbmc/jaunty-ppa/ubuntu jaunty main
You’ll get a warning saying, “Since GPG keys were not
found the packages downloaded from this repo cannot be
verified.” I don’t really care about this so I don’t add GPG
keys; however, if you so wish, the details are at their PPA
page.
Now press Alt+F2 and type in “apt:xbmc” at the box.
Get a cup of coffee while XBMC gets downloaded and
installed.
Great! XBMC is now installed. Go to Application→
Sound & Video→XBMC Media Center and watch it start
up.
The first time might be a rather disappointing start,
since XBMC is running windowed. Go to Settings ->
Appearance and then Screen, and change the resolution to
your screen’s resolution—either 720p or 1080p. That’ll take
care of things. If it doesn’t, exit XBMC, press Alt+F2 and
run “xbmc -fs”. That should sort out the problem.
The next thing to do is browse to Music, Pictures and
Videos, and add the sources that were discussed earlier.
Now, once you copy your media to these folders, you will
be able to browse to them from the interface.
That’s almost all. There’re some small details left.
Setting up LIRC is left to the user, however, as remote
settings are unique for every model.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________
The idiot box
Time for the telly. This will only work if you have a
normal analogue cable connection, not if you have DTH.
Anyway, let’s go...
First of all, install the essential build packages:
sudo apt-get install build-essentials linux-headers
Now, download the tuner drivers from http://linuxtv.
org/repo/, and extract the tarball somewhere. Get into the
directory from a terminal and issue the following code:
make
sudo make install
Notice that there is no configure step here.
Now, download the card firmware from http://
steventoth.net/linux/hvr1800/. Download at least the zip
file and the extraction shell script, and run the script. Two
.fw files should be extracted. Copy these to /lib/firmware.
Now reboot the machine to achieve a clean state, and
then run the following code:
sudo modprobe {cx23885, tuner}
If this stage goes well (you should investigate the
dmesg output), the tuner now officially works under Linux.
The next step is installing MythTV and integrating it with
XBMC, so you can use your XBMC interface to watch and
record live TV.
Type the following command to download and install
MythTV:
sudo apt-get install mythtv
First, MythTV needs to be configured. No instructions,
sorry! There’re too many variables to be considered here.
The device node for your TV tuner card is /dev/video0.
To watch TV, you need to manually scan the line for all
frequencies that have channels (the frequencies depend
on your local cable company). Then you need to key in
channel numbers and names manually. Getting hold of
an EPG (Electronic Program Guide—the stuff that shows
schedules) is also difficult, but you can find some on MSN,
which I’m not sure is MythTV-compatible. You need an
EPG though—or else Mythbox won’t work.
Use this Web resource to help configure MythTV:
http://parker1.co.uk/mythtv_ubuntu.php. Although it’s not
for India, most of the stuff described in there does apply.
And it’s a long document, mind you.
After you have done all the configuration in MythTV
(make sure it works exactly as you intend—you need to be
able to watch channels and use the EPG perfectly), it’s time
to hook up MythTV to XBMC, and turn the media centre
into a TiVo as well.
Execute the following code:
How To  |  Open Gurus
sudo apt-get install ffmpeg python-mysqldb
Then, head to http://code.google.com/p/mythbox and
download the latest tarball. Extract it into $HOME/.xbmc/
scripts, like:
cd ~/.xbmc/scripts
tar -xvzf /path/to/mythbox-svn-1260.tar.gz
Start up XBMC again (use Alt+F2, then run xbmc
-fs; you need to be in full screen). Now go to Scripts→
MythBox. You’ll be sent into a Settings screen. Fill in your
settings — mostly database settings—and if you just
can’t get MythBox to authenticate, use ‘root’ as the user
name and the root password (the MySQL root password
that you supplied when you were setting up MythTV).
Now go to Test Settings. If Settings OK comes up, exit the
settings screen (Press Esc), and enjoy Live TV. You can even
schedule recordings. To get into MythBox, go to Scripts→
MythBox. Now instead of going to the settings screen, you
will be taken to the TV console. Enjoy!
Final touches
Finally, it’s time to get it all started silently. First of all, go
to System→Administration→Login Window. Type in your
password, and then go to the Security tab. Here, enable
auto-login, and select the appropriate user to log in as.
This should ensure that you do not have to type in your
credentials to start using the media centre.
The next thing to do is make XBMC start up
automatically. Go to System→Preferences→Startup
Applications. Hit Add. Type in anything in the Name
field. Type in xbmc -fs in the command field. Click Add,
and then Close.
Now reboot your media centre. Voila, it boots straight
into XBMC!
Anything else?
Sure, why waste such a good piece of hardware? Besides
running XBMC, which is using up all your GPU power, you
can run an Icecast server in the background to stream your
music over Wi-Fi, or use VLC to stream videos as well.
This makes good use of the leftover processing power. Yes,
with that 1TB hard disk, you can sure store all your H.264
movies, music and pictures, and still have some space left,
so why not use it as a home server? Innovate, while I try
out my TV-less XBMC set-up. (Yes, I don’t have a tuner
because I use Tata Sky :-)) 
By: Boudhayan Gupta
The author is a 15-year-old student studying in Class 9. He
is a logician (as opposed to a magician), a great supporter of
Free Software and loves hacking Linux. Other than that, he is
an experienced programmer in BASIC and can also program in
C++, Python and Assembly (NASM Syntax).
MythBox screenshots are courtesy: http://code.google.com/p/mythbox/wiki/Screenshots
www.LinuxForU.com  |  LINUX For You  |  NOVEMBER 2009  |  65
Developers  |  How To _______________________________________________________________________________________________

nI tr The
oducing
Pardusman
Project
A Google Summer of Code 2009 Entry
Today, almost all of us have tried our hands at building a custom
openSUSE distribution, using the latest SUSE Studio. The
experience of being able to customise a distribution
installer to suit one’s needs is stupendous. However,
have you ever wondered if you could customise
the installers for other distros too? Welcome
to the Pardusman Project!

G oogle Summer of Code (GSoC)

is one of Google's important
programmes that encourages
open source development and
contribution. This event, first held from May
to August 2005, is an annual programme.
Through these few months every year, Google
awards stipends to hundreds of students who
successfully complete free and open source
coding projects that have been requested for.
The programme is open to students aged 18
and above.
Although it's dubbed the Summer of
Code, I would say it's more about passion
than code. A piece of code is just a written
expression of the passion, anyway.
Being a student developer, it means a lot
to us when speaking about our Summer of
Code experience. Every year, Google selects
around 1,000 student developers, from around
the world, assigned to different open source
projects. See code.google.com/soc for more.
This was my second GSoC. In 2008, I
participated in a Fedora project. And in 2009,
I worked with the Pardus Linux project.
Pardus is a nicely built and user-friendly
GNU/Linux distro from Turkey, developed
and maintained by TUBITAK (The National
Scientific and Technological Research
Council of Turkey). My project was to create
a Web-based ISO image creation tool for
Pardus and I was mentored by Ekin Meroglu,
core developer and project administrator,
Pardus Linux Project.

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_____________________________________________________________________________________________________ How To  |  Developers

A background on Pardus
Pardus, as a GNU/Linux distro, is known to be user-
friendly, sleek, simple and spicy with lots of custom
configuration tools written by the Pardus team. The distro
is not based on any of the traditional base distros like
Debian or Red Hat. It's completely written from scratch.
The package management tool is PISI. The distro makes
use of lzma compression for packages and also supports
xdelta-like techniques to make fetching packages for
installation, faster. Pardus has developed its own core
libraries and APIs to develop different applications on the
Pardus platform.
Personally, I have been fascinated by Pardus for the
last two years. Its boot speed is what I found to be the
most impressive. This had prompted me to dig into the
Figure 1: Sign-in
initrd/init boot scripts. I found it interesting that all system
configs and automation scripts (traditionally written in
Bash) have been replaced by Python. Even before Ubuntu's
fastboot technology Upstart came out, Pardus’ init was
much faster.

What's my project about?

We have numerous variants of GNU/Linux (popularly
known as distributions or distros) for different
purposes. When we go for a distro install, we receive a
base system with a standard set of applications bundled
along with them. To make the OS work to our likes and
specs, we need to install another set of packages that
cater to our working domain or interest. Also, it requires
setting up themes, wallpapers, copying our own files to
the home directory, etc.
My project aimed at bringing out a Web-based
distro ‘cooker’. Users should be able to create their own
custom distro builds by providing numerous custom
options ranging from wallpapers to package selections.
By locating the URL of this distro cooker (let's call it Figure 2: Distro type
Pardusman), we could do the following customisation,
using a simple Web interface: are classified as different components according to
1. Home Page their group. For example, the GIMP and Inkscape are
• Sign up for a user account other graphic tools included in the package group
• Sign in to Pardusman 'multimedia-graphics'. By using a drop-down tree
2. Distro type element, we access the packages under a package
• Select the distro type: Live CD or Install CD? If it's group and select the check boxes in order to include
Live, specify the user name, password, and host them. We can even include all packages in a package
name group by checking the group itself. Also, there is a
• Provide a build project name search option available to look for packages. All the
3. Repository: Select the package repository from the packages from the selected Pardus repository will be
Pardus servers, to be used for the build. listed in the packages widget. There is also an option to
4. Languages: Select language support to be included, calculate size—on clicking the Calculate button, you
besides setting the default language. can get the total size for the build.
5. Upload 7. Wallpaper: You can either select the default option
• Upload a RELEASE file (i.e., a text file that appears from the list of wallpapers, or upload your own.
in the root of the CD-ROM that contains some 8. Media Selection: You can select the required image
notes on the build). output. For example, an ISO image, or virtualisation
• Upload the contents of the home directory. images like VMWare, Qemu, Virtualbox, etc.
6. Packages: A package tree widget will appear. Packages Once you have completed the wizard, you can submit

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Developers  |  How To ______________________________________________________________________________________________________
Figure 3: Repository selection
Figure 4: Package selection widget
the configuration for distro building. It will be processed by
the buildfarm queue underlying in the Pardus server. You
can check back after a few hours and look into the 'user
log' page to get the status of the build you have requested,
the link for download, the link to the project file and the
Pardusman log file. Also, a history of all builds you have
ever made.
Getting started
I started my work with UI (user interface) design. I worked
out the basic pages and their structure. Then I designed
these using Inkscape and published them on my blog for
feedback. As it happens with FOSS projects in general, I
too got a lot of feedback. In fact, one of my good friends
(Hiran) helped me give the finishing touches to the final
set of images I required for the front-end UI.
Typically, a project has several development
versions of the same app while coding. Under the
68  |  NOVEMBER 2009  |  LINUX For You  |  www.LinuxForU.com
circumstances, the manual way of backing up the code
makes everything complex and difficult. Sometimes this
even leads to loss of data/code. So, it is always advisable
to use some kind of version control system (VCS) to
keep track of code.
Git is one of the best version control systems available.
I decided to go with Git, synced with github.com, where
several FOSS projects are housed. You can pull the latest
copy of Pardusman, using:
$ git clone git://github.com/t3rm1n4l/pardusman.git
Coming back to the UI elements, my next job was
to create the set of Web pages using HTML and CSS. I
scripted each page to complete the Web wizard described
earlier. My template was now ready.
However, since the wizard, whose purpose is to collect
data from a user, consists of several pages, it required
transition from page to page. Page-to-page transitions were
in traditional styles and not of Web 2.0 standards. So, I
decided to use div containers, which can dynamically load
HTML content using AJAX. This made the requirement
for refreshing and loading new pages through URLs,
redundant.
JQuery is a rich open source JavaScript library that
helps to implement AJAX methods and calls using its
rich in-built functionalities. I could easily implement the
dynamic loading of pages and simple animation effects,
using JQuery.
Once the templates and basic AJAX loading were
completed, I started off with Django, Python's own
Web framework. Django is a rapid Web application
development platform. It makes it easier to develop
complex Web applications in a short span of time. The
coding with Pardusman progressed very fast.
The database storage in Django is handled using its
own data model object-oriented structures. Initially, I
wrote the pages for the user account sign up and sign in.
Django was pretty easy to follow and code.
I got stuck with coding while creating a complex
package selection widget. A package selection widget
consists of a drop-down of packages with components in
the top level and check boxes attached to it. It was solved
with JQuery hacks. Thanks to the #jquery IRC channel of
irc.freenode.net for helping me out.
There will be more than one package repository, like
pardus-2008 and pardus-2009. By selecting any one of
them, we can build either a Pardus 2009 or a Pardus
2008 distribution. Dynamically producing the package
information and bringing it to the packages widget
causes overheads and puts a heavy load on the CPU.
There might be thousands of packages in the repo and
hundreds of users simultaneously accessing Pardusman,
which would surely bring the server down. So I decided
to build a static repo package information creator that
would be scheduled to update the packages information
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________
every day. The Web application makes use of that static
page to display package information.
The next difficult task with implementing the UI
was regarding the option of size calculation around the
package widget. Once users select the required packages
through check boxes, they can calculate the total size for
the custom build. The size must be calculated live.
I used the memcached server, which can cache data
and program objects. But the size of the object to be
cached is restricted to 1 MB. I maintained objects of all
repositories with package lists and corresponding package
sizes in the memcached as cache objects.
Once the user clicks the Calculate button, it sends
the list of selected packages to a Django function in the
backend, which accepts the post requests. From the
received list of packages, it analyses the package names
one by one, and its size is grabbed from the repository
memcached object.
The backend handles a lot of complex tasks like
dependency resolving, which is very interesting. The user
selects a set of packages that are required. But they are not
the only packages to be included in the distro build. Each
package is dependent on some other package. This relation
is called dependency.
Each pisi package (e.g., pidgin.pisi) consists of the data
and binary files, along with a meta file that describes all
the details about the package. This is an XML file. We can
find its dependencies by parsing the XML file.
Each package requires some other package to work.
For example, Pidgin requires the following packages to
work, which in turn may require some other package to
work, thus creating a chain of requirements.
Every time a user requests for a size calculation, it
resolves dependencies before calculating the size each
time and returns a set of information. Here's an extract
from the Pidgin package metafile:
<Name>pidgin</Name>
<RuntimeDependencies>
<Dependency>audiofile</Dependency>
<Dependency>gtk2</Dependency>
<Dependency>gnutls</Dependency>
<Dependency>gstreamer</Dependency>
<Dependency>startup-notification</Dependency>
<Dependency>cyrus-sasl</Dependency>
<Dependency>gtkspell</Dependency>
<Dependency>avahi-glib</Dependency>
<RuntimeDependencies>
The method of solving this complex loop and
calculating the list of net packages that should go with
the distro build is known as dependency resolving. It is
performed in the Pardusman backend. Take a look at the
Pardusman code, which you will find interesting.
The wallpaper selection page relies on JQuery. When
a user uploads a picture, it is to be stored in the server,
How To  |  Developers
Figure 5: The 'user log' page lets you download the custom distro you created
and only a thumbnail is to be returned and shown in the
list of wallpapers. For resizing the uploaded image to a
thumbnail, I have used imagemagick in the backend.
The wizard involves seven basic steps. At each
step, when the next button is clicked, it sends out the
data collected from the current page to the server.
This data is added to the browser session using the
request.session dict object available in Django. Once
all the wizard steps are completed, it has to generate
a configuration file for the custom distro build making
use of all the data provided by the user.
XML is used to represent the project configurations.
The commonly used XML parser library in Python is
ElementTree. But ElementTree is very slow to meet the
requirements of this project. Hence, the Pardus team
has ported piksemel, a XML parser used by the Jabber
protocol, to the Pardus platform. It is a very fast XML
parser. The project_config file is generated with the
following tree structure.
<PardusmanProject type="install" media="iso">
<Title>Test-Project</Title>
<ReleaseFiles>RELEASE.txt</ReleaseFiles>
<Wallpaper>user_wallpapers/wallpaper_R6wL4i.jpg</Wallpaper>
<UserContents>user_contents.tar.gz</UserContents>
<PackageSelection repo="Pardus-2009">
<SelectedComponent>x11-server</SelectedComponent>
<SelectedComponent>desktop-kde-base</SelectedComponent>
<SelectedComponent>x11-util</SelectedComponent>
<SelectedPackage>glitz</SelectedPackage>
<SelectedPackage>libdmx</SelectedPackage>
<SelectedPackage>kdeedu-marble</SelectedPackage>
<Package>less</Package>
<Package>libX11</Package>
<Package>jpeg</Package>
<Package>sysvinit</Package>
<Package>piksemel</Package>
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Developers  |  How To ______________________________________________________________________________________________________
</PackageSelection>
<LanguageSelection default_language="en_US">
<Language>en_US</Language>
</LanguageSelection>
</PardusmanProject>
At the end of the wizard, the config file is generated.
The project_file is designed as a tarball (.tar.gz) with the
following structure:
Project_file.tar.gz
---+ user_contents.tar.gz ( user home contents )
--- user_presentation.odp
---- RELEASE.txt
---- project.xml
---+ user_wallpapers (wallpaper)
--- wallpaper1.png
On generating the project file, it is sent to the
Buildfarm Process Queue. Buildfarm is a component of
Pardusman that performs the distro builds from the given
project configuration file. Buildfarm is run as a daemon
that is run all the time. Process Queue maintains the list
of distro build requests from users along with the link of
the project file generated. There is another queue called
the On_Progress queue, which maintains the list of distro
projects for which the builds are in progress.
Distro building is a CPU-intensive process and
it requires a heavy hardware configuration to build
multiple distros at a time. On my laptop, performing
more than two distro builds raises temperatures to
very high levels and the laptop gets powered off. So
simultaneous multiple distro builds are to be restricted
according to the server capacity. Buildfarm is provided
with a configuration file through which lots of
parameters can be specified. It includes BUILD_LIMIT
= No of builds to be performed at a time.
The Buildfarm_queue is capable of holding any
number of user build requests. The On_Progress queue
is restricted according to BUILD_LIMIT. Once the build
of one project is completed, a project is fetched from
the Buildfarm_queue to the On_Progress queue and the
build will be started.
Users can keep track of the progress of their project
build requests through the Userlog page. In the Userlog
page, once the user requests for a build and the project
is sent to the Buildfarm_Queue, it will be shown as
'scheduled' against the line that corresponds to a project
build. Once the project is in the build state and is inside
the On_Progress queue, it will be shown as 'in progress'.
If the project build is successful, it will be shown as
'Completed' and if it fails, will show up as 'Failed'. Once the
build is completed, a download link to the image will be
provided. It also will list out a Logfile link, which can be
used for debugging if the project build fails and can send a
bug report or dugg with the reasons for it.
70  |  NOVEMBER 2009  |  LINUX For You  |  www.LinuxForU.com
There are lots of complex things underlying
the Buildfarm component. Explaining those
implementation details is not within the scope of this
article. Still, I would like to share some of the best
features that come with the pisi package management
tool, which helped me automate the build of the
filesystem base easily.
For example, if you want to build a filesystem base in
the current directory 'pardus-root', perform the following:
# pisi --yes-all -D"./pardus-root" ar pardus-install http://paketler.pardus.org.
tr/pardus-2009/pisi-index.xml.bz2
It initiates the directory 'pardus-root' as the root
filesystem attached with a repository.
Now we can install packages to this filesystem as:
# pisi --yes-all --ignore-comar -D"./pardus-root" it -c system.base
# pisi --yes-all --ignore-comar -D"./pardus-root" it <package_name>
Did you find any package management tool that is
capable of this? Apt, Yum, Emerge…? There are more.
Suppose I have a bunch of .pisi package files in a directory,
I can make that directory a pisi repository. What do you
think?
Change the current directory to the above mentioned
directory and execute the following:
# pisi ix
It will create the index file pisi-index.xml and pisi-
index.xml.bz2
Now you can add the directory as the repository, using:
#pisi ar 'repo-name' ar <directory_path/pisi-index.xml.bz2>
That is all about the essentials of Pardusman. We are
setting up Pardusman on the official Pardus server for all
of you to master your own custom Pardus builds. Keep
yourself updated with http://pardusman.pardus.org.tr.
I have already set up the Pardusman wizard right
there. The Buildfarm component is not yet initiated as the
daemon. The Pardus team will run the Buildfarm soon.
Hence you can have your own distro versions of a custom-
built Pardus, with your own wallpaper, packages, home
folder contents and a lot more.
Grab the code at http://google-summer-of-code-2009-
pardus.googlecode.com/files/Sarath_Lakshman.tar.gz
Enjoy Pardusman. Get, set and burn!
Happy hacking! 
By: Sarath Lakshman
The author is a Hacktivist of Free and Open Source
Software from Kerala. He loves working on the GNU/Linux
environment and contributes to the PiTiVi video editor
project. He is also the developer of SLYNUX, a distro for
newbies. He blogs at www.sarathlakshman.info
______________________________________________________________________________________________ Contest   |  Developers

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will be awarded by LINUX For You and Directi.
What is expected out of you?
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www.LinuxForU.com  |  LINUX For You  |  NOVEMBER 2009  |  71

Open Gurus  |  Overview ____________________________________________________________________________________________
Electronic Design
and Fabrication with
gEDA
Learn how to design and fabricate cool electronic gadgets.
H
ave you ever wondered
how electronic gadgets are
designed? The heart of these
gadgets is a certain circuit
board(s) in a nice shiny cabinet. But how
does one design these circuit boards?
Resistors, capacitors, transistors, etc, are
all brought together in a circuit board to
perform a greater function. This article
gives a brief description about the tools for
electronic design in GNU/Linux.
What is EDA?
EDA (Electronic Design Automation)
comprises a set of tools for electronic
design. EDA applications are used by circuit
designers to design and produce electronic
systems. EDA tools are for low- to medium-
complexity printed circuit board (PCB)
design. A basic EDA tool takes care of the
following functionalities:
 Schematic capture
 Netlist generation
 Simulation
 Printed circuit board (PCB) layout
 PCB testing
 PCB fabrication
72  |  NOVEMBER 2009  |  LINUX For You  |  www.LinuxForU.com
What is gEDA?
Although most popular EDA tools are
proprietary in nature, in this article we'll
introduce you to gEDA that is basically a
set of GPL’d tools for EDA design, and these
applications are collectively referred to as the
gEDA Suite. gEDA is pronounced ‘g-daahhh’
or ‘gee-daahhh’. The gEDA project is also
known as gaf ( for ‘gschem and friends’).
The gEDA project was started by Ales
Hvezda on April 1, 1998, and it included a
schematic capture program and a netlister.
At present, this project features a complete
suite of free software applications for
electronics design, which includes: schematic
capture, a bulk attribute editor, a bill of
materials (BOM) file generator, a design rule
check (DRC), a 20 file format netlister, an
analogue and digital simulator, and a printed
circuit board (PCB) designer. Refer to Tables
1 and 2 for tools that are part of gEDA.
That's a huge list, wouldn't you agree?
But what's the use of so many independent
tools? Usually, hardware designs are not
done using a single piece of software. A series
of programs are used for a good hardware
design. For instance, in the case of PCB
__________________________________________________________________________________________________ Overview  |  Open Gurus

Tools that are part of gEDA Separately developed/maintained tools, but associ-
Tool Usage ated with gEDA
gschem Schematic capture Tool Usage
gnetlist Netlist generator PCB Free/open source PCB layout editor
gattrib Attribute editor gerbv Gerber viewer
symbols Symbol library gnucap GPL'ed mixed-mode/mixed-level
circuit simulator
libgeda Libraries for gschem gnetlist and
gsymcheck gnucap+ An extension of the GNU Circuit Analy-
sis package
gsymcheck Symbol checker
GTK Wave Electronic waveform viewer
examples Example projects
documentation Documentation gwave Analogue waveform viewer
Table 1 Icarus Verilog Verilog simulation and synthesis tool
ngspice An improved SPICE
fabrication, the following tools are used: gsch2pcb A tool to forward annotation from your
 gschem – draws electrical schematic schematic to layout, using pcb
 gsch2pcb/gnetlist – creates netlist GSpiceUI Graphical front-end to SPICE/gnucap
 PCB – reads netlist, draws PCB wcalc Transmission line analyser
 gerbv – Gerber checker/viewer vhdl2vl VHDL to Verilog translator
The gEDA project is widely aimed at circuits of low- to mid-
level complexity that are geared towards board-level designs. Table 2

Why gEDA?
The first thing that makes it so attractive is its GPL license.
gEDA supports a wide range of platforms including
GNU/Linux, UNIX, OSX and Windows. Besides these, the
following are some of the main attractions:
 File formats are in ASCII text and well documented.
 Command line options help to automate design flows
using UNIX tools like make, awk, sed, etc.
 There are no boundaries for design size, number of
components, PCB layer count, etc.
 Free from DRM—i.e., you can share your designs and
design elements with everyone.
Last, but not the least, is the superb mailing list of the
project, where you can find developments, bug fixes and
user queries being discussed.
On the downside, there might be some cutting-edge
features that you find missing from gEDA. However,
the features available are adequate, and more are being
anyone using gschem and pcb. The misson of gedasymbols.
org is to increase the usage of the gEDA suite. Users who
would like to contribute missing symbols can add them
to the online library. The updated components/symbols
library will be available during its next release.
As with all EDA tools, gschem has a symbol editor. You
can draw your symbol and save it. You can upload this to
gedasymbols.org.
Draw schematics with gschem
gschem is the specialised drawing program for gEDA. The
term gschem means gEDA's schematic. Usually you'll need
Preliminary work
(block diagram, parts
selection, consideration of
different design
alternatives)

added over time.

Schematic capture
(gschem)
Component and symbol library
A good EDA tool requires a wide collection of symbols, 1 2
Human
which are a simple representation of circuit elements such Generate netlist for
simulation (gnetlls)
Generate netlist for
layout (gnetlls)
activity
as resistors, ICs, connectors, etc. This is available in the
Computer
gEDA library—currently, it numbers approximately 2,000. Change
design
netlist
(SPICE, verilog, VHDL) netlist program
All these symbols are in ASCII formats so they can be
easily edited using text editors. Note that the schematic is Simulation PCB layout File format
(ngspice, tclspice, (PCB)
a collection of symbols, and thus all schematics have the Icarus Verilog,
Alliance VHDI)
same format as symbols. Genbefiles
Symbol libraries are always never complete as new
components are developed over time. So regular updating PCB fab Stuff PCB Play with PCB
in lab!!!
of the symbol library is vital. An online collection of
symbols is maintained at gedasymbols.org. It's a repository
Figure 1: Board design flow using gEDA
for symbols, footprints and documentation that is useful to

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Open Gurus  |  Overview ___________________________________________________________________________________________________
Figure 2: A schematic drawn using gschem
to draw schematics for an electronic design—gschem is for
that purpose.
You can invoke it from the command line by typing
gschem. It will open a graphical application with all the
menus and buttons necessary to draw a schematic. You'll
find gschem very similar to other EDA programs. Besides,
you can easily master it using the tutorials available at the
gEDA documentation site (http://geda.seul.org/wiki). This
tool will give you all the options for wires, component pins,
components, etc, that you require for your PCB design.
Since all your files are saved in the ASCII format,
scripting languages can easily manipulate these. Thanks
to this feature, there are several symbol generation tools
that have been made using Python and Perl, besides the
footprint generators made using Python. This is in stark
contrast to proprietary EDA programs, which lock in users
by not supporting ASCII file formats.
Front view
Figure 4: A home-made PCB by the author (ATMega8 mini development board)
74  |  NOVEMBER 2009  |  LINUX For You  |  www.LinuxForU.com
Figure 3: The AT90USB162 mini development board layout made with pcb
Connectivity information using gnetlist
The schematic you prepared using gschem needs a
netlist. The term ‘netlist’ means a net connections list,
where the ‘net’ is the connection between components.
The netlist file contains the list of connections between
the component pins. The tool for this task is gnetlist. In
simple words, gnetlist is a graphics-to-text converter tool.
Netlist information is mainly used by circuit simulators
to simulate the schematic you have drawn—as the input
to layout programs that typically hold information about
each component's PCB footprint, as well as connectivity
information between all component pins.
A wide range of around 20 different file formats can be
outputted by the netlister. Among these file formats, the
SPICE format is popular. These file formats can be used
to simulate electrical circuits that are popular among
electrical and electronics engineering students worldwide.
Rear view
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
Front view
Figure 5: Machine-fabricated board designed by author (AT90USB162 mini development board)
BOM (bill of materials) generation
and DRC (design rule checking) can
also be outputted from gnetlist.
For designing PCBs, the schematic
file has to be converted to the pcb-
readable file format. You can do
this using gnetlist, as mentioned.
However, this is a slightly complicated
process. So one of the gEDA hackers
made a tool called gsch2pcb in C. This
does the schematic to pcb file format
conversion, automatically.
PCB, the layout program
The pcb tool helps you draw the wires
for a custom printed circuit board
(PCB). pcb is, in fact, a specialised
drawing program to draw metal
tracks, components, drill holes and
other structures onto your circuit
board. Its user interface presents a
drawing window accompanied by all
the widgets and tools necessary to
draw your circuit board.
Designing printed circuit boards
using pcb is very simple. Place the
component footprints on the board,
and route the tracks between the
pins of the footprint. That’s all! You
have your PCB ready for fabrication.
On the other hand, if you have
drawn the schematic using gschem,
you can use the command gsch2pcb
to convert the schematic file into a
pcb-readable format.
pcb supports around 16 copper
layers, which, I'd say, is quite sufficient
for most designs. Also, there is no
limitation in the design size, number
of components, PCB layer count, etc,
Rear view
which is an important advantage when
compared to other proprietary EDA
tools. Other features of pcb include a
change in track width, importing logos
on to the board, auto-routing, etc.
A complete design
Once the PCB layout is ready, you
can export it into a wide variety of
formats. If you need to fabricate a
home-made PCB, you can take a laser
printout and use a hot iron to transfer
the PCB pattern to the copper clad
board. This method of transferring the
PCB layout from a sheet of paper to
copper cladding is nicely described
online—Google for more information!
If you don't have a printer at home,
then export the file to the ps format
and then later to a PDF. Figure 4
shows a home-made PCB that I
fabricated.
However, some of the designs
might be complex -- the ones for
SMD components, for instance. These
types of boards are hard to fabricate
at home. Under the circumstances,
first export the PCB file into a Gerber
file format. Then send the Gerber file
to a PCB fabricator near your locality.
The PCB fabricator uses machines for
fabricating boards. The details for the
PCB fabricating machine are in the
Gerber files. This kind of fabrication
generally produces a high-quality
board as compared to a home-made
PCB, but is much costlier. Figure 5
shows a board fabricated by sending
a Gerber file to the PCB fabricator.
(Figure 3 shows a PCB design that's
www.LinuxForU.com  |  LINUX For You  |  NOVEMBER 2009  |  75
Overview  |  Open Gurus
made using gEDA.) Compare the
quality of the home-made and
machine-fabricated PCBs.
There are many big open source
hardware projects that use gEDA
for designing. Some of them include
Ronja (Reasonable Optical Near Joint
Access), Darrell Harmon's Single
Board Computer Project, MINT, etc.
There are some projects contributed
by the author also.
Other tools and design flows
Remember that gEDA itself is a
collection of tools. It contains a
wide variety of tools for electronic
design, and describing each will
take up a lot more pages. And
yet, gEDA is not the ultimate in
electronics engineering tools
available for GNU/Linux. There are
still a lot more companion projects.
Some of these, along with their
applications, are described below:
 Gerbv– Gerber viewer
 Gnucap – Next-generation
analogue circuit simulation
 Ngspice – SPICE3f5 (analogue
simulator)
 Icarus Verilog – Verilog compiler
and simulator
 GTKWave – Waveform viewer
 Wcalc– Transmission line and
electromagnetic structure
analysis 
Links and references
• Official gEDA website: www.gpleda.
org
• gEDA Wiki Page: en.wikipedia.
org/wiki/GEDA
• gEDA tutorials and projects: www.
delorie.com/pcb
• gEDA symbol library: www.
gedasymbols.org
By Jeffrey Antony
The author is a 21-year-old
electronics engineer from Kerala,
currently enrolled in a PG Diploma in
embedded systems at the DOEACC
Centre, Calicut. He is a free software
and open hardware enthusiast. In his
free time he likes to go cycling, listen
to music, and work on open hardware
projects. You can find more about the
author at www.jeffrey.co.in
Developers  |  How To _______________________________________________________________________________________________

Get A Hold on the Scheduler

with CPU Affinity, in Linux
Understanding CPU affinity helps in designing a better application for SMP
systems, by binding a certain process to a specific CPU. This article discusses
the CPU affinity interface to Linux.

O
n a multi-core/multi-processor
system, the OS usually distributes
different processes on all available
processors (CPU) in a way that
allows the system to work most efficiently.
However, for some reason, you might like to
take charge and overrule the kernel's process
scheduling to bind your application to a
processor/CPU of your choice. This is known
as CPU affinity.
In this article, I will try to cover how a
normal Linux user can set/retrieve a specific
task's affinity from the command line, and
then we will go further with the actual
implementation of system calls.
So, what is CPU affinity?
On symmetric multi-processing (SMP) systems,
the operating system's process scheduler not
only decides when a process can run, but also
where it should run. CPU (or processor) affinity
is the term that describes this property of the
scheduler to associate a particular process to a
specific processor or CPU.
There are two types of CPU affinity that
the Linux scheduler supports: soft affinity (or
natural affinity), and hard affinity.
The soft affinity of a process is merely an
attempt by the scheduler to run the process
on the same processor on which it ran the last
time. This way the scheduler tries to improve

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_____________________________________________________________________________________________________
the performance with the ‘locality of reference’. However, this
is not always possible if, for instance, the preferred or ideal
processor is busy for further scheduling. The scheduler then
migrates the process to a different processor for execution.
On the other hand, hard affinity provides users/
programmers the flexibility to override the natural affinity for
their tasks/processes. In Linux, all processes are represented
by the kernel data structure task_struct that contains fields
related to the process attribute. Among these is the cpus_
allowed bitmask field that specifies which CPU(s) shall handle
the task. This bitmask consists of a series of n bits, one for
each n logical processor in the system. So if a system has four
processors (i.e., a multi-processor system), this bitmask will
have four bits, and if each processor is a dual core, then it'll
have an eight-bit bitmask.
The default state of a process in Linux for the cpus_
allowed field is all 1s. It indicates that the process is allowed to
run on any available CPU, and can migrate across processors
as and when required.
Hard affinity allows you to alter this bit field. The
scheduler then honours it and schedules your task on the
processor of your choice. We will soon look at how you, as a
user/programmer, can change the affinity.
But let's first discuss the possible reasons that may lead
you to design your application to override the natural (or soft)
affinity of the process/thread.
Why overrule a natural affinity?
Well, the Linux scheduler does a fantastic job of scheduling.
It tries to run a process on the same processor it ran the last
time, assuming that some remnants of the process may be left
(especially the cache) and thus a better performance could be
achieved. However, there are various other parameters that a
scheduler considers while deciding which processor should
run the process.
One of the possible reasons could be that the preferred
processor is busy but the other processor(s) in the
system is not. Under the circumstances, the scheduler
will dispatch the process to the idle processor in order to
maintain the load balance.
However, for whatever reason, a program might want to
have control over the scheduling aspects of the application.
Some of these could be:
 A multi-processor system needs to keep the processor's
caches valid. Data must be modified by only one
processor, and all other processors that have cached the
same data must invalidate their copy and fetch the most
recent data again in case of a cache miss, and they do so.
This may come at a high cost in terms of performance.
Now think of a situation when a process starts bouncing
between different processors. This will constantly cause
the cache to get invalidated. And the situation may
even worsen, if the threads of a process are scheduled at
discrete processors and they are perpetually accessing
and updating the same piece of data. This will lead
to the frequent invalidation of the cached data. Here,
How To  |  Developers
hard affinity will rescue you from such performance
degradation by letting you schedule your application on
the processor(s) of your choice.
 In NUMA (Non-Uniform Memory Architecture) machines,
processors will have faster access to local memory than
shared memory between different processors. Therefore,
forcing a process to the processor that has local access
to the frequently used memory helps in boosting the
performance.
 Sometimes real-time applications require a dedicated
processor. With hard affinity you can ensure that a
long-running and time-sensitive application runs on a
specific processor.
Linux kernel 2.6 provides complete control to set and
retrieve the CPU affinity of a process. However, a word of
caution before we proceed: using hard affinity might cause
the processors to have uneven loads.
CPU affinity—a user's perspective
To set or retrieve the CPU affinity of a running process from
the shell prompt, you can use the taskset command, with
which you can even launch a new task with a given affinity.
Let's see how we can do that.
Let’s suppose we have a running process, with PID
(process ID) 21934. To bind this process to Processor
#0 (the processor count starts from 0), let’s issue the
following command:
$ taskset -p 0x01 21934
Here, the -p flag indicates that taskset operates on an
existing process. The hex value 0x01 tells the new affinity
mask of the process (i.e., CPU #0). Finally, the third parameter
21934 is the PID of the task.
To test the above example, you first need to find the PID
of an already running process using the ps command. In my
case, the process I picked had a PID number of 21934. Here's
the output after running the command:
pid 21934's current affinity mask: 2
pid 21934's new affinity mask: 1
From this output, we can conclude that for the process
with PID 21934, the affinity mask is reset from 2 to 1. Now
let's explore how the current affinity mask of a running
process can be seen (in my case, I picked out a running
process with PID 21934):
$ taskset -p 21934
pid 21934's current affinity mask: 1
You can also check the CPU affinity list (i.e., the list of all
the processors that can run the process) of a process. This can
be done with -c flag. Let's have a look at it.
$ taskset -c -p 22139
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Developers  |  How To ______________________________________________________________________________________________________

pid 22139's current affinity list: 1 /* The 2nd processor in the system */
CPU_SET(1, &mymask);
So far, we have seen how an affinity of an already-running
process can be set/retrieved. You can also launch a new task /* Set affinity mask of the process */
with the given affinity. I will show you how you can do so. if (sched_setaffinity(pid, len, &mymask) < 0) {
perror("main: Error in sched_setaffinity() ");
$ taskset -c 0x01 ./a.out return;
}
The above command will launch a new task with Affinity
Mask 1 and Affinity List 0. CPU_ZERO(&mymask);

CPU affinity—a developer's perspective /* Get affinity mask of the process */

Linux kernel 2.6 supports system calls that your application sched_getaffinity(pid, len, &mymask);
can exploit to enforce/retrieve the affinity at the process level.
These system calls are sched_setaffinity and sched_getaffinity. printf("main: My Process Affinity is %p\n", mymask);
return 0;
#include <sched.h> }

int sched_setaffinity(pid_t pid, unsigned int cpusetsize, cpu_set_t *mask); The above example binds the current process to
the first two processors in the system, and fetches its
int sched_getaffinity(pid_t pid, unsigned int cpusetsize, cpu_set_t *mask); affinity.

While sched_setaffinity() sets the CPU affinity, sched_
getaffinity() retrieves it.
The man page reads, “sched_setaffinity() sets the
CPU affinity mask of the process whose ID is PID to the
value specified by the mask. If PID is zero, then the calling
process is used. The argument cpusetsize is the length (in
bytes) of the data pointed to by the mask. Normally, this
argument would be specified as sizeof(cpu_set_t). If the
process specified by the PID is not currently running on
one of the CPUs specified in the mask, then that process
is migrated to one of the CPUs specified in the mask.” On
the other hand, “sched_getaffinity() writes the affinity
mask of the process whose ID is the PID into the cpu_set_t
structure pointed to by the mask. The cpusetsize argument
specifies the size (in bytes) of the mask. If PID is zero, then
the mask of the calling process is returned.”
On success, sched_setaffinity() and sched_getaffinity()
returns 0, error returns -1.
Let's write a simple line of code to change the CPU affinity
of the same program and retrieve its newly assigned affinity.
#ifndef _GNU_SOURCE
#define _GNU_SOURCE 1
#endif
#include <stdio.h>
#include <sched.h>
int main()
{ #include <sched.h>
cpu_set_t mymask;
unsigned int len = sizeof(mymask);
unsigned int pid = 0; /* Current Process */
CPU_ZERO(&mymask);
CPU affinity—leftover for developers
Finally, I would like to introduce you to the thread affinity.
Initially, it did not seem like it was within the scope of this
article, but while researching CPU affinity, I could not find
significant discussions on the Internet or elsewhere, on
affinity setting/retrieving at the thread level in Linux, apart
from a synopsis of APIs in the Linux man page.
So for my own purposes, I did some experiments with
thread affinity and believe that it would be worth sharing
my experience with you.
Note: I expect readers to be familiar with multi-
threading concepts (with pthreads) in Linux.
By default, all threads within a process inherit the same
affinity that a process has. We can override this process-
level affinity with APIs: pthread_attr_setaffinity_np() and
pthread_getattr_np().
Let's explore these APIs with our next example.
Note: The posix functions with the _np suffix are non-
standard and not portable.
#ifndef _GNU_SOURCE
#define _GNU_SOURCE 1
#endif
#include <pthread.h>
#include <stdio.h>
void * thread_aff(void *arg)
{
cpu_set_t mymask;
unsigned int len = sizeof(mymask);

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_____________________________________________________________________________________________________
pthread_attr_t gattr;
/* Get the attribute of this thread */
pthread_getattr_np(pthread_self(), &gattr);
CPU_ZERO(&mymask);
/* Get the affinity of the this thread */
pthread_attr_getaffinity_np( &gattr, len, &mymask);
printf("thread_aff: My Inherited Thread Affinity is %p\n", mymask);
CPU_ZERO(&mymask);
/* The 1st Processor in the system */
CPU_SET(0, &mymask);
/* Set the affinity mask for this thread */
if(0 != pthread_attr_setaffinity_np( &gattr, len, &mymask)) {
perror("thread_aff: Error in pthread_attr_setaffinity_np() ");
} second processor in the system). This thread then overrides
CPU_ZERO(&mymask);
/* Get the affinity of the this thread */
pthread_attr_getaffinity_np( &gattr, len, &mymask);
printf("thread_aff: My Overriden Thread Affinity is %p\n", mymask);
pthread_exit(NULL);
} these APIs, as sometimes, I observed weird results during my
int main()
{ Well, I’ve tried to introduce you to the idea of CPU affinity. Now
pthread_t pth;
cpu_set_t mymask;
unsigned int len = sizeof(mymask);
unsigned int pid = 0; /* Current Process */
CPU_ZERO(&mymask);
/* The 2nd processor in the system */
CPU_SET(1, &mymask);
/* Set affinity mask of the process */
if (sched_setaffinity(pid, len, &mymask) < 0) {
perror("main: Error in sched_setaffinity() ");
return;
} • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Processor_affinity
CPU_ZERO(&mymask);
/* Get affinity mask of the process */
sched_getaffinity(pid, len, &mymask);
printf("main: My Process Affinity is %p\n", mymask);
pthread_create(&pth, NULL, &thread_aff, NULL);
How To  |  Developers
pthread_join(pth, NULL);
CPU_ZERO(&mymask);
sched_getaffinity(pid, len, &mymask);
printf("Main: My Process Affinity is Still %p\n", mymask);
return 0;
}
Note that in order to compile the above code, you need
to link it with pthread libraries using -pthread. To compile it,
issue the following command:
$ gcc <Program File Name> -o <Output Executable Name> -pthread
The above program binds the current process to the
second processor in the system, and then creates a thread:
thread_aff. The thread_aff, by default, inherits the same affinity
that the parent process currently has (i.e., binds itself with the
this affinity and binds itself with the very first processor in the
system. However, as the scope of thread_aff ends, the program
again verifies the process affinity to see if an alteration in the
thread affinity has made any impact on the process affinity.
Ideally, you should observe that the affinity of the process
remains unaffected and tied to the second processor in the
system.
I, however, am slightly sceptical about the maturity of
experiments with them.
What next?
you can play around with these system calls and experiment
further. Besides the Linux man pages that are always a source
of great help, Google and other search engines also help in
searching for the relevant content.
Happy coding! 
References
• http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc938636.aspx
• http://littledaemons.wordpress.com/2009/01/22/cpu-
affinity-and-taskset/
• http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/setting-processor-affinity-
certain-task-or-process.html
• http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-affinity.
html
• http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/online/pages/man3/
pthread_attr_setaffinity_np.3.html
• http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/online/pages/man3/
pthread_getattr_np.3.html
By: Vivek Kumar
The author is a system engineer at IBM India, and works for IBM-
ISS (Internet Security Systems). He is based in Pune and you can
reach him at mail_DOT_vivekkumar_AT_rediffmail_DOT_com.
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Developers  |  How To _______________________________________________________________________________________________
Create Cute Apps With
This article covers application development with Qt SDK and database
connectivity for simple applications.
I
f you plan to develop eye-
candy applications or some
nice games, or if you need to
create applications to store and
retrieve data at home or at office, Qt is one
of the best solutions for you.
A little background on Qt
Qt, as you perhaps already know, is a cross-
platform framework used to create rich GUI
applications. It’s most popularly known as
playing a major role in KDE applications
and libraries. One of its primary advantages
is that it is available for many platforms,
including Linux, Macintosh and Windows.
It even has its wings spread in the mobile
development space with ports available for
embedded Linux (Qt Extended, previously
known as Qtopia), Symbian (about to
release) and Windows CE.
Qt is not just restricted to GUI
applications but comes with many features
like multi-threading, networking, database
connectivity, 2D/3D graphics with OpenGL,
XML, SVG, Phonon support, WebKit
integration, etc.
Although Qt programming is C++ based,
you don’t have to be disappointed by this
fact if you are a fan of Java, Python, Ruby
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Qt
or other languages. Official Java bindings
are available as Qt Jambi and third-party
bindings are available for many languages
like Python, Ruby, etc. It can be easily
integrated with popular IDEs like Eclipse
and with the recent release of Qt Creator,
application development is ultra simple.
Qt was started by Trolltech and was
acquired by Nokia last year. Nokia later
renamed it Qt Development Frameworks.
Qt comes under a multi-licence model that
allows both open source (under GPLv3,
LGPLv2.1) and commercial usage.
Signals and slots
Qt event handling is mainly based on a signals
and slots mechanism that allows communication
between different objects (widgets). When an
event occurs, a signal is emitted from the source
widget, triggering a slot on the target widget as
per the registered mapping.
A slot is nothing but a function holding
code for event handling. For example,
when you click the Exit button, a signal
is emitted, which is received by the main
window and the close slot is executed to quit
the application. Many signals and slots are
predefined for all widgets, and we can always
add custom signals and slots to any widget.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________ How To  |  Developers

Qt tools
The following are a few important tools provided by Qt SDK.
qmake is used to generate a platform-specific build
script (Makefile) from project configuration (.pro) files. It is
also used to create .pro files by inspecting available sources,
headers and other files. Once the Makefile is generated, the
make command can be used to build an application.
Qt Designer is used to create UI forms on the
WYSIWYG principle. It allows you to create three types
of forms—Window, Simple Dialogs, and Custom Widgets
for re-usability. Many widgets are shown on the left-side
pane of the Designer. You can drag and drop widgets onto
the form. Apart from designing forms, it also supports
property editing, signal/slot mapping, tab ordering, layout
management, preview forms, etc. But Designer is not helpful Figure 1: Qt Designer
for custom coding.
Qt Assistant is used to refer to documentation with
great comfort.
Qt Linguist is used to translate user interfaces (UI)
into local languages.
Qt Creator: As mentioned earlier, Qt Designer won’t
allow direct coding—you need to implement custom slots
in the header, source files manually using an external
editor and then use qmake and make from a terminal to
build a project. This is not comfortable at all, compared to
other GUI builders. However, with Qt Creator, application
development can be really simple—just create a project on-
the-fly and use the embedded form editor for direct coding. Figure 2: Qt Creator
The context menu of any widget in the embedded editor
provides an option to ‘Go to Slot’ to write custom slots.

How to install
Download qt-sdk-linux-x86-opensource-???.bin from
qt.nokia.com. (Use qt-sdk-linux-x86_64-opensource-???.bin
for 64-bit platforms.)
Make the bin file executable by using the following
commands:

chmod u+x qt-sdk-linux-x86-opensource-???.bin

Run the set-up as follows: Figure 3: Editing form in the embedded editor of Qt Designer

./qt-sdk-linux-x86-opensource-???.bin Make sure the correct Qt framework is configured

Finally, follow the step-by-step procedure to finish
installation.
If you run the installation as the root user, the SDK
will be installed in /opt//qtsdk-??? by default and the Qt
framework in /opt/qtsdk-???/qt/, which we will refer to as
QTDIR from now onwards. If you install it as a normal user,
your home directory is used instead of /opt.
Run qtdemo located in $QTDIR/bin to see Qt examples
and demos, and to test them.
Check if qt-creator is available in the Applications→
Programs menu after installing the SDK. Otherwise run qt-
creator located in the /opt/qtsdk-???/bin directory manually.
in qt-creator by navigating to Tools→Options→Qt4→
Qt versions. Select the default option if more than one
is available. At present, the latest stable releases are Qt
Framework v4.5.2, Qt Creator v1.2.1.
Simple applications
In this example we will create a simple application to add
two numbers.
Launch Qt Creator and create a new GUI-based
project by navigating to File→New→Projects→Qt4 Gui
Application. Key in a project name, the location, and select
the modules to include. For this example no additional
modules other than ‘default’ are required.

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Developers  |  How To ______________________________________________________________________________________________________
Figure 4: Signal slot mapping
Figure 5: UI for simple database applications
From the project explorer, open mainwindow.ui, and place
the following widgets on the form as shown in Figure 3:
 3 Labels (object names—lblNum1, lblNum2, lblNum3)
 3 Line Edits (object names—leNum1, leNum2, leNum3)
 3 Push Buttons (object names—pbAdd, pbClear, pbExit)
To change object names of widgets, right click and
select ‘Change Object Name’. To change the display text
of widgets, double click on them or right click and select
‘Change Text’.
Enable the readOnly property for the third line edit with
the object name leNum3. Use the property editor to change
properties of a widget.
We now need to provide event handling for buttons.
For our exit button, let’s use the default signals and slot
editor. Go to the signals and slot-mapping mode using
the toolbar button (or F4 shortcut). Drag from the Exit
button and drop to the empty area of the form, and a
screen appears to configure the connection as shown in
Figure 4. Select the check box at the bottom of the screen.
Select the signal clicked() on the left pane and close() slot
on the right pane. Finish the mapping by clicking the OK
button. Come back to the widget-editing mode using the
toolbar button (or F3 shortcut).
When the project is built and run, you can close the
application using the Exit button. But for the Add button
the action is not available by default, so we need to create a
custom slot for that.
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Right click on the Add button—>Go to Slot. (Note
that this feature is available only in the embedded form
editor, and not when opened with the external designer.)
Select the signal clicked() which will create a new
function (slot) on_pbAdd_Clicked in mainwindow.cpp
and also its prototype in mainwindow.h. Put this code in
that function’s body:
int x,y,z;
x=QVariant(ui->leNum1->text()).toInt();
y=QVariant(ui->leNum2->text()).toInt();
z=x+y;
ui->leNum3->setText(QVariant(z).toString());
The text() function of QLineEdit class gives the text
entered in the widget. Similarly, setText(QString&) is used
to change the text inside. The QVariant class provides many
constructors and functions for different types of conversion.
Similarly, you can use this code for a clear slot:
ui->leNum1->clear();
ui->leNum2->clear();
ui->leNum3->clear();
Alternatively, you can use the default signals and slot
edit mode as clear slot for the line edit is predefined. Now
build and run the project to test the application.
Database applications
Before going ahead with this example, let’s prepare
MySQL for connectivity. Create a database called qtest.
Create a table called ‘student’ with the fields rollno(int),
sname(varchar), marks(decimal) as follows:
mysql> create database qtest;
mysql> use qtest;
mysql> create table student(rollno int, sname varchar(10),marks
decimal(8,2),primary key(rollno));
Create a Qt GUI Project just like the previous example,
but add the QtSql module this time.
You can observe the statement QT += sql in the project
file. Design the form as shown in Figure 5. You can use the
external designer for convenience. Right click on UI Form→
Open With→Qt Designer.
Use the following object names for the widgets
 lblRollno, lblName, lblMarks for labels
 leRollno, leName, leMarks for line edits
 pbClear, pbExit, pbInsert, pbDelete, pbModify, pbFirst,
pbPrev, pbNext, pbLast for buttons.
You can use default slots for the Clear and Exit options.
Close Designer, come back to Qt Creator, and add these
headers to mainwindow.h:
#include <QSqlDatabase>
#include <QSqlQuery>
Developers  |  How To ______________________________________________________________________________________________________
Or instead, it’s enough to add #include<QtSql> to use
all classes in the SQL module.
Add these members in the private section of the
MainWindow class declaration (in mainwindow.h):
QSqlDatabase db;
QSqlQuery *pquery,*pselect;
void display();
Add this code to the constructor of the MainWindow
class (in mainwindow.cpp):
db = QSqlDatabase::addDatabase(“QMYSQL”);
db.setHostName(“localhost”);
db.setDatabaseName(“qtest”);
db.setUserName(“user”);
db.setPassword(“password”);
if(!db.open())
qDebug(“unable to connect”);
pquery = new QSqlQuery();
pselect = new QSqlQuery(“select * from student”);
The QSqlDatabase class is helpful to establish a
connection with MySQL. Various members of this class
are used to specify the driver, hostname, database, user
name, password, etc. After setting all these properties,
use the open method to establish a connection—this
returns true if successful.
qDebug, like printf, displays messages in the output
window that you can use for logging.
Add this code to the destructor (in mainwindow.cpp):
delete ui;
delete pquery;
Code for Insert (right click on the Insert button and
choose ‘Go to slot’):
int rollno=QVariant(ui->leRollno->text()).toInt();
QString sname=ui->leName->text();
double marks=QVariant(ui->leMarks->text()).toDouble();
pquery->prepare(“insert into student values(?,?,?)”);
pquery->bindValue(0,rollno);
pquery->bindValue(1,sname);
pquery->bindValue(2,marks);
if(!pquery->exec())
qDebug(“Insertion failed”);
else
qDebug(“inserted new row=>%d,%lf”,rollno,marks);
pselect->last();
The prepare function of the QSqlQuery class forms a SQL
query with the place holders (?), which you can bind with
actual data at a later time. The exec function completes the
operation. Or you can even pass a full-formed query to the
exec function to perform the operation.
Code for First:
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pselect->first();
display();
Similarly, you can write the code for the Prev, Next
and Last buttons with the previous(), next() and last()
slots of the QSqlQuery class. Use the first, previous,
next and last functions to navigate between different
records fetched by the query specified in the
QSqlQuery constructor or the exec function (select *
from ‘student’ when pselect is created).
Code for display (mainwindow.cpp, declaration
already added to mainwindow.h):
void MainWindow::display()
{
ui->leRollno->setText(pselect->value(0).toString());
ui->leName->setText(pselect->value(1).toString());
ui->leMarks->setText(pselect->value(2).toString());
}
The display function holds code that’s commonly
required to update line edits after any navigation.
The value method of the QSqlQuery class takes the
field identifier as the parameter and returns its
content for the current record in the QVariant form.
The toString method is used to convert it into the
QString format.
Similarly, implement the Delete and Modify
operations with your own logic using the prepare
and exec functions of the QSqlQuery class.
Troubleshooting
The default Qt framework may not have the MySQL
driver by default—you can test this by checking the
contents of the $QTDIR/plugins/sqldrivers directory,
which should have the libqsqlmysql.so file. If it’s
missing, extract libqsqlmysql.so from a platform-
specific package like qt-mysql-4.x.y-z (RPM based) or
libqt4-sql-mysql (Deb based) and copy it to the above
location manually.
If you are comfortable with compiling sources, the
best way is to build Qt from the sources by adding
MySQL support during configuration. 
References
• Official Qt website: qt.nokia.com
• Documentation for Qt and related products: doc.trolltech.com
By Rajesh Sola
The author is a faculty member of the Computer Science
Department at NBKRIST, Vidyanagar. He is a contributor
to the OpenOffice.org project and is keen on promoting
FOSS awareness and adoption in rural areas. He believes in
encouraging and supporting students to take the open source
road. You can reach him at rajesh at lisor dot org.
Admin  |  How To ________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The Art of Guard, Part 6
SELinux Policy Modules
In this article, we will learn about the basics of policy modules.
L
ast month, we looked at logging SELinux
tasks and deciphering them using various
methods—most notably auditd and
setroubleshoot RPMs. We learned that we can
easily fix minor errors involving by Boolean values and/or
changing the types of certain files by using commands like
setsebool and chcon/restorecon.
But what about allowing a certain set of actions that
are, by default, denied by the default targeted policy?
What if we really want files of tmp_t to be accessed by
the httpd daemon due to certain requirements in our
work environment?
What if we wanted to install our own applications and
daemons while still maintaining the security provided by
SELinux? What if we run an Oracle database on our RHEL
server, which is exposed to the Internet—because that is
its intended use?
What about the whole concept of open source,
freedom and the ability to modify applications to suit
our needs rather than we modifying ourselves to suit the
application's needs?
Thankfully, SELinux gives us the power and complete
freedom to achieve all this. There are two ways in which we
can approach the whole concept of customising SELinux:
1. Modifying the source of the policy (easily available
through source RPMs).
2. Developing modules that can be compiled and loaded
along with the base policy.
For beginners, intermediate-level users and also for
production purposes, I would not recommend the first
option unless it is absolutely necessary. It requires more
in-depth knowledge and experience to modify the core
86  |  NOVEMBER 2009  |  LINUX For You  |  www.LinuxForU.com
policy—we will take a look at this option in a later part
of this series.
For most of us, the second option of building policy
modules will suffice. It is an easier approach and also
lets us develop a better understanding of the SELinux
policy language before we delve deeper into it by
modifying the core policy.
Customising the default policy: Power to
the people
As discussed above, we will customise the default targeted
policy by adding our own modules. To do so we will use
the semodule command.
semodule is the tool used to manage SELinux policy
modules, including installing, upgrading, listing and
removing modules. It is installed by the policycoreutils
RPM. The man page, as usual, gives further details and
helpful instructions on how to use the command.
Listing SELinux modules
To list modules, use the following:
# semodule -l
If you execute this command on a freshly installed
system with SELinux enabled, you will see a list of
modules. A sample output on my system follows:
[root@vbg ~]# semodule -l
amavis 1.1.0
ccs 1.0.0
clamav 1.1.0
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ How To  |  Admin

dcc 1.1.0 The policy modules obviously make

evolution 1.1.0 a lot of difference. That’s what they were
iscsid 1.0.0 created for. To observe the difference
mozilla 1.1.0 they make, let's use the wonderful seinfo
mplayer 1.1.0 tool discussed earlier. ������� ���
nagios 1.1.0 To get an overall idea of the ��������� ��������
oddjob 1.0.1 SELinux policy currently loaded, ��������� ��
openoff 1.0.0 we shall use the command seinfo. ����������� ������
pcscd 1.0.0 A sample output from my system is ���������������
pyzor 1.1.0 shown below: ��!����� ���"������
razor 1.1.0
n
ff oon
ricci 1.0.0 [root@vbg modules]# seinfo
smartmon 1.1.0
O f
O ctt
%
%
22 Seelle ggss
5
tmp 1.0.1 Statistics for policy file: /etc/selinux/targeted/
5
vbg 1.0.3 policy/policy.21
n
Policy Version & Type: v.21 (binary, MLS)
raaiini
What this means is that the t
default SELinux installation does Classes: 61 Permissions: 220 The November
come with some modules loaded Types: 1516 Attributes: 148
that are not part of the base policy. Users: 3 Roles: 6
Training Calendar
Looking more closely into the Booleans: 211 Cond. Expr.: 187 ● Fast Track RHCE:

output of the above command, we Sensitivities: 1 Categories: 1024 4th Nov 09 & 11th Nov 09
● Regular RHCE:
see that in my system there are 18 Allow: 82576 Neverallow: 0
th
policy modules installed. Each row Auditallow: 28 Dontaudit: 5086
9 Nov 09 (7am – 9am)
9th Nov 09 (6pm – 9pm)
of the above output corresponds to Role allow: 5 Role trans: 0
● RH 423 LDAP:

a policy module. Type_trans: 1400 Type_change: 17

5th to 8th Nov 09
The output of the semodule -l Type_member: 0 Range_trans: 23 ●RH 429 SELinux

command gives us two columns of Constraints: 47 Validatetrans: 0 11th to 14th Nov 09

information: Module Name and Fs_use: 15 Genfscon: 64 ● Clustering & Storage

Module Version. Thus we can see Portcon: 264 Netifcon: 0 20th to 22nd Nov 09
● PostgreSQL
that the amavis module has a version Nodecon: 8 Initial SIDs: 27
number of 1.1.0 whereas the vbg 20th to 22nd Nov 09
● PHP & MySQL
module has a version 1.0.3. We can see that there are 1,516
18th Nov 09
Also, these are the modules types and 82,576 allow rules being ● Shell Scripting

currently loaded into the memory recognised by SELinux. You can 30th Nov 09
and are active along with the base redirect this output to a temporary ● Mail Server

policy. But, where are these modules file just for comparison, later. You 9th - 11th Nov 09
located? What difference do they could use the following command: ● Jboss

make to the overall SELinux policy? 14th Nov 09 (Sat & Sun)
How are they loaded and removed? [root@vbg modules]# seinfo > /tmp/org-selinux-
Exam Dates
Let's try to answer the above policy ● RHCE:
questions, one by one.
These are binary policy modules Let's now remove one of the CEE @@ /9--th & 25th Nov 09
0/
that, by default, have a file extension loaded modules. As an example, let us RH
R H 0,,55000 EX
C ● 423:
1 0
1 LLYY 16 th
Nov 09
of .pp (Policy Package). Generally, remove the amavis module. Rss O
R O
NN EX 429:
●

the module name and the file name 16th Nov 09

is kept the same, though it's not Removing SELinux modules ● EX 333:

mandatory. Therefore, we need To remove a loaded SELinux module, 17th Nov 09

to look up a file named amavis.
pp (Policy Package for the Amavis
daemon). By default, the location
of this file is /etc/selinux/targeted/
modules/active/modules/. If you go
into this folder and list the contents,
you will see the policy package files of
all the currently loaded modules.
use the semodule command with the
r option and the module name as the
argument. For example:
[root@vbg modules]# semodule -r amavis
This removes the amavis module.
To ensure that the above command

www.LinuxForU.com  |  LINUX For You  |  NOVEMBER 2009  |  87

Admin  |  How To _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

has worked, list all the currently from 1,516 to 1,507 name of the module, its version
loaded modules: 2. Reducing the number of 'Booleans' and all the additions desired in
from 211 to 210 the policy, such as types, rules,
[root@vbg modules]# semodule -l 3. Reducing the number of 'allow Booleans, etc.
ccs 1.0.0 rules' from 82,576 to 81,929  The file contexts file (with the .fc
clamav 1.1.0 4. Reducing the number of 'type extension—for example, /usr/
dcc 1.1.0 transition rules' from 1400 to 1,387 share/selinux/devel/example.
evolution 1.1.0 and so on... fc) contains the default security
iscsid 1.0.0 Thus, we see that by using contexts to be provided for files
mozilla 1.1.0 modules, we can at least add types, created/used by the application
mplayer 1.1.0 Booleans and rules to the core policy. for which we are creating the
nagios 1.1.0 That is pretty much what we want policy module.
oddjob 1.0.1 to do when we need to modify the  The interface file (one with the .if
openoff 1.0.0 default policy to suit our needs. extension—for example, /usr/
pcscd 1.0.0 From what we’ve just covered, share/selinux/devel/example.if)
pyzor 1.1.0 it is clear that we need to create generally would contain macro
razor 1.1.0 SELinux policy modules—thereby definitions that assist in creating
ricci 1.0.0 creating new types, Booleans and type enforcement rules.
smartmon 1.1.0 various rules. The type enforcement file (.te) is
tmp 1.0.1 mandatory, while the other two files
vbg 1.0.3 Creating SELinux modules (.fc and .if), if not required, need not be
SELinux policy modules need to explicitly created. I would advise their
To understand the difference be written in the SELinux policy use, but it generally depends on the
made by the removal of the 'amavis' language. It is not a complicated kind of policy module to be developed.
package, again redirect the output of language at all, but like most
seinfo to a file: programming languages, requires a Syntax of the type
certain structure and syntax to be enforcement file
[root@vbg modules]# seinfo > /tmp/new-selinux- followed while creating the modules. The most important thing for
policy Also, once the text files containing a policy module to be clearly
our desired modifications have been distinguished is its name and
...and run a diff on the two files: created, we need to compile them version—the output of the semodule
into a binary policy module (Policy -l command. This is specified as
[root@vbg modules]# diff /tmp/org-selinux- Package). Once the Policy Package the first line in a .te file as policy_
policy /tmp/new-selinux-policy files have been created, they just need module(<policy name>,
6c6 to be tested and then finally loaded to <policy version>).
< Types: 1516 Attributes: 148 enable the desired functionality. New types being introduced by
--- To enable the development the module are declared as type
> Types: 1507 Attributes: 148 and compilation of policy modules, <new type>;.
8c8 install the selinux-policy-devel RPM. Let's create a small policy module
< Booleans: 211 Cond. Expr.: 187 The installed RPM on my system is called test to introduce a new type
--- selinux-policy-devel-2.4.6-106.el5_1.3. called lfy_t. Use the following steps to
> Booleans: 210 Cond. Expr.: 186 This module creates the /usr/ achieve the above:
10,11c10,11 share/selinux/devel/ directory, which 1. Create a work directory for
< Allow: 82576 Neverallow: 0 contains 'include' files and a makefile building and compiling your
< Auditallow: 28 Dontaudit: 5086 for compilation. It also installs three SELinux modules.
--- files—example.te, example.fc and 2. Copy the necessary files needed
> Allow: 81929 Neverallow: 0 example.if—to assist you in the for compiling SELinux modules.
> Auditallow: 28 Dontaudit: 5062 creation of policy modules. 3. Create at least a .te file for your
13c13 The three files are important to SELinux module, specifying
< Type_trans: 1400 Type_change: 17 understand the structure of policy the module name and version
--- modules: number.
> Type_trans: 1387 Type_change: 17  The type enforcement file (a 4. Compile the source file above to a
file with the .te extension—for binary policy package file.
You will see that removing amavis example, /usr/share/selinux/ 5. Load the binary policy package.
has made the following changes: devel/example.te) is the most 6. Test the changes in the
1. Reducing the number of 'types' important file. This contains the SELinux Policy.

88  |  NOVEMBER 2009  |  LINUX For You  |  www.LinuxForU.com

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Step 1: Create a work directory
for building and compiling your
SELinux modules.
Instead of working in default
directories, experience has taught me
to work as a non-root user in non-
default folders. Let us log in as the
non-root user and make a working
directory for our SELinux modules:
[vbg@vbg ~]$ mkdir test-selinux
[vbg@vbg ~]$ cd test-selinux/
Step 2: Copy the necessary
files needed for compiling SELinux
modules.
The only important file that
you need to copy to your working
directory is the Makefile from the
/usr/share/selinux/devel/ directory.
[vbg@vbg test-selinux]$ cp /usr/share/selinux/
devel/Makefile .
[vbg@vbg test-selinux]$ ls
Step 3: Create at least a .te file for
your SELinux module, specifying the
module name and version number:
[vbg@vbg test-selinux]$ vim test.te
Put the following text in the above file:
policy_module(test,1.0)
type lfy_t;
~ [root@vbg devel]# semodule -i /home/vbg/test-
:wq
And save the source file.
The above step specifies that we
are creating a policy module named
test with the version 1.0 and are
declaring a new type to be introduced
in the policy called lfy_t.
Step 4: Compile the source file
above to a binary policy package file
To compile the source, simply run
make (ensure you have copied the
Makefile in Step 2 shown above):
[vbg@vbg test-selinux]$ make
Compiling targeted test module
/usr/bin/checkmodule: loading policy
How To  |  Admin
configuration from tmp/test.tmp iscsid 1.0.0
/usr/bin/checkmodule: policy configuration mozilla 1.1.0
loaded mplayer 1.1.0
/usr/bin/checkmodule: writing binary nagios 1.1.0
representation (version 6) to tmp/test.mod oddjob 1.0.1
Creating targeted test.pp policy package openoff 1.0.0
rm tmp/test.mod.fc tmp/test.mod pcscd 1.0.0
pyzor 1.1.0
You should now have the compiled razor 1.1.0
policy package file test.pp: ricci 1.0.0
smartmon 1.1.0
[vbg@vbg test-selinux]$ ll test 1.0
total 60 tmp 1.0.1
-rw-r--r-- 1 vbg vbg 437 Sep 24 10:36 Makefile vbg 1.0.3
-rw-rw-r-- 1 vbg vbg 0 Sep 24 10:36 test.fc
-rw-rw-r-- 1 vbg vbg 0 Sep 24 10:36 test.if You can see that a module named
-rw-rw-r-- 1 vbg vbg 22994 Sep 24 10:36 test.pp test with version 1.0 has been loaded.
-rw-rw-r-- 1 vbg vbg 37 Sep 24 10:36 test.te To check whether our new type
drwxrwxr-x 2 vbg vbg 4096 Sep 24 10:36 tmp has been added, retype the earlier
command:
To check if a type lfy_t exists, just
use the following command: [root@vbg devel]# seinfo -t | grep lfy
lfy_t
[root@vbg devel]# seinfo -t |grep lfy
This shows that we have
You will not receive any output. successfully introduced a new type in
This shows that the type lfy_t does our SELinux policy by adding a policy
not exist in our policy currently. module.
Step 5: Load the binary policy Up next
package. In this article, we have covered the
As the root user, use the semodule basics of policy modules. In the next
command to load the compiled test. part of the series, we will look at
pp policy package. The option to use adding allow rules, type transition
with the semodule command is -i rules, Booleans and other policy
(which stands for insert). building blocks. We shall also look
at the audit2allow tool that helps to
create policy modules.
selinux/test.pp I hope the article has helped you
To confirm if the module has understand the modular structure
been successfully loaded, list all the of SELinux. It is this modularity
modules: that allows administrators to easily
create SELinux policy modules for
[root@vbg devel]# semodule -l whatever applications they deploy --
ccs 1.0.0 without compromising the security
clamav 1.1.0 of their system.
dcc 1.1.0 Looking forward to meeting you
evolution 1.1.0 all again, next month... 
By: Varad Gupta
Varad is an open source enthusiast who strongly believes in the
open source collaborative model not only for technology but also for business. India’s
first RHCSS (Red Hat Certified Security Specialist), he has been involved in spreading
open source through Keen & Able Computers Pvt Ltd, an open source systems
integration company, and FOSTERing Linux, a FOSS training, education and research
training centre. The author can be contacted at varad.gupta@fosteringlinux.com
www.LinuxForU.com  |  LINUX For You  |  NOVEMBER 2009  |  89
Open Gurus  |  How To _______________________________________________________________________________________________
‘Typesetting’
Presentations with Beamer
Do you use LaTeX for your document processing requirements?
Then why switch to any other application when you need to create
presentations? Try Beamer instead.
B
eamer (latex-beamer.sourceforge.net) is
a LaTeX class for making presentation
slides. In LaTex parlance, it’s just another
Document Class.
Why would you want to hack LaTeX to create slides?
Hasn't OpenOffice.org, or worse, a certain Microsoft
PowerPoint, already won that battle?
You shouldn't even attempt to use Beamer if you
have no idea what LaTeX is. However, if you already
use LaTeX—chances are you swear by it—then Beamer
is for you. With Beamer, you can create slides for that
upcoming talk without compromising on eye candy,
and with the comfort levels of your favourite document
preparation system.
As an aside, explore and learn LaTeX. If you are a
student, you will create better-looking project reports; and
if you are a writer, you will create more professional looking
articles, manuals and books. The Resources section at the
end will have some links to learn more about LaTeX. To
make the best use of the rest of this article, I shall assume an
intermediate knowledge of LaTeX.
Installation
The easiest way to install LaTeX Beamer is to use the
package manager on your Linux distribution. On Debian
and Ubuntu, the package is named as latex-beamer. Do an
apt-get install:
# apt-get install latex-beamer
You will see that some more packages that provide
extra LaTeX classes need to be installed. Prominent among
these are latex-xcolor and pgf. Hit a y for the installation of
the packages to start. You should have the Beamer LaTeX
installation in /usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/beamer/. (Note
that if you do not have LaTeX installed, it might ask you to
install more packages.)
90  |  NOVEMBER 2009  |  LINUX For You  |  www.LinuxForU.com
There is, of course, the
option of installing LaTeX
class manually. It's easy to do,
but not easier than the previous method. The LaTeX
Beamer user guide shows you how to do it.
Now that we are done with the installation, let us
create our first presentation with LaTeX Beamer. In the
rest of this article, I shall assume that we have used the
package manager to install the Beamer LaTeX class. If
you have installed it manually, it will just need a little bit
of correlation between the article details and the
source code.
Simple presentations
Before we create our own presentation, let us compile
one of the shipped examples. Copy the beamerexample-
conference-talk.tex files from /usr/share/doc/latex-
beamer/examples/a-conference-talk to a sub-directory
under your home, say ~/beamer/examples. Now, compile
the .tex file using latex:
$ latex beamerexample-conference-talk.tex . .
./beamerexample-conference-talk.toc) [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10]
[11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] [25]
[26] [27] [28] [29] [30] [31] (./beamerexample-conference-talk.aux) )
Output written on beamerexample-conference-talk.dvi (31 pages, 763500
bytes).
Transcript written on beamerexample-conference-talk.log.
If you see some errors reported, a fix is needed
somewhere. We should have the presentation ready in the
.dvi file. Now, use the dvipdf utility to convert it into a PDF
file and open it using a PDF reader, such as Evince. Figure 1
is a screenshot of the first slide.
Impressed? I am. Let's continue getting impressed.
Diving in, open the .tex file in a LaTeX editor of your
choice. VIM-LaTeX (vim-latex.sourceforge.net) brings
____________________________________________________________________________________________________
you the best of both worlds. The
first line after the comments is
\documentclass{beamer}. So Beamer
is just another LaTeX document class.
Good, just the thing I promised.
The theme for your
presentation is specified using
\usetheme{Darmstdadt}. You can
view all the current themes installed
in /usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/
beamer/themes/theme. Then you
specify other appearance-specific
settings such as the template, font,
etc. After specifying the author
and the title, the main document
or the presentation starts from
\begin{document}, and a new slide
is enclosed by \begin{ frame} and
\end{ frame}. Let us now create a
new presentation and learn more
while we put to use what we have
already learnt.
Creating a new presentation
We will create a slide deck consisting
of a Title slide, a Table of Contents
and two other slides—Introduction
and Summary. Listing 1 gives the
complete code for the .tex file, which
we will call example.tex:
% A simple presentation in LaTex using Beamer
% Can be used as a template for larger, specific
presentations
% example.tex
\documentclass{beamer}
\mode<presentation>
{  New Section: The section name
\usetheme{Berkeley}
\setbeamercovered{transparent}
} Table of Contents, generated by
\usepackage[english]{babel}
\usepackage[latin1]{inputenc}
\usepackage{times}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\title{Beam it with Beamer}
\subtitle{Presentations in LaTex}
\author{Amit Saha}
How To  |  Open Gurus
\date {October 1, 2009/ LFY}
\begin{document}
\begin{frame}
\titlepage
\end{frame}
\begin{frame}{Outline}
\tableofcontents
\end{frame}
Figure 1: An example presentation created using Beamer
\section{Introduction}  Using multimedia in your
slides: Beamer ships with the
\begin{frame}{What is Beamer?}{Beam it up!} multimedia package that you can
\begin{itemize} use to insert sound, animation or
\item A LaTex class for creating high quality movies. I haven't tried this feature.
presentations. So you will have to use it to see
\end{itemize} how well it works!
\end{frame}  Notes and handouts: Besides
\section{Summary} creating the presentation, you
might also want to create notes
\begin{frame}{Did we like Beamer?} for yourself or to distribute as
handouts. Beamer class also has
\begin{itemize} support for creating these.
\item Yes!
\end{itemize} Still hooked?
\end{frame} If you have been following this
article and at the same time typing
\end{document} in some of the LaTeX class, I am
hoping that Beamer has impressed
Some of the LaTeX elements are you, or at the very least, you’ll now
generic to any LaTeX document, such consider it as an option. The Beamer
as \title, \author and \usepackage. user guide has a lot more detailed
Here are some Beamer-specific information on the topics I have
elements: touched and more, and is a very
 New Slide: A slide is enclosed by handy reference while you create
\begin{ frame} and \end{ frame}. your presentation. For queries,
doubts and suggestions, please feel
before a \begin{ frame} is the free to e-mail me. 
entry for the new slide in the
Resources
\tableofcontents. • Beamer: latex-beamer.sourceforge.
You can now compile the LaTeX net
file similarly. With what we have • Beamer Documentation: In /usr/
learnt so far, we can easily create share/doc/latex-beamer or in your
source tarball
presentations that would contain • LaTeX resources: en.wikipedia.
only text. org/wiki/LaTeX#Further_reading
More things to try out
 Working with graphics: Working By: Amit Saha
with images here is the same The author blogs at amitksaha.
as you would do for any LaTeX wordpress.com and can be reached at
document class by making use of amitsaha.in@gmail.com.
the graphics or graphicsx package.
www.LinuxForU.com  |  LINUX For You  |  NOVEMBER 2009  |  91
 Tips Tricks
Kill your processes graphically
The xkill command closes the connections of a
client to X server. Using the xkill command changes
your mouse cursor into a ‘kill’ sign. Now when you
click the left mouse button on any window that you
want to kill, it gets killed. Note that this program is very
dangerous, yet useful for aborting program windows
that otherwise do not shut down.
—Arunprasad R, ararunprasad@gmail.com
Play songs from the command line
You can play any song file from the command
line without using any player but a utility called SOX.
More often than not, SOX is available in your distro's
repository. You can install it in a Debian-based system as
follows:
apt-get install sox
To play a song from the command line, use:
play song.mp3
...where song.mp3 is the path to your MP3 file. To
stop playback, hit Ctrl+C.
If your song's file name contains spaces, specify the
file name within double quotes. For example:
play "song 2.mp3"
When playing audio files, you can even specify more
than one input file as follows:
play "song 2.mp3" "song 3.mp3" "song 5.mp3"
—Pramod, pramod@icsplindia.com
92  |  NOVEMBER 2009  |  LINUX For You  |  www.LinuxForU.com
Check processes not run by you
Imagine the following scenario: you get yourself
ready for a quick round of Crack Attack against
a colleague at work, only to find the game drags
to a halt just as you're about to beat your uppity
subordinate. What could have happened to make
your machine so slow? It must be some of those other
users, stealing your precious CPU time with their
scientific experiments, Web servers or other weird,
geeky applications!
Okay, so let's list all the processes not being run by
you. Just run the following command:
ps aux | grep -v `whoami`
Or, to be a little cleverer, why not just list the top ten
time-wasters…
ps aux --sort=-%cpu | grep -m 11 -v `whoami`
It is probably best to run this as the root user, as this
will filter out most of the vital background processes.
Now that you have the information, you can simply kill
their processes, but much more dastardly would be run
xeyes on their desktop. Repeatedly!
—Pavan Kumar Nelanuthula,
pavan.n@gmail.com
Driver information of Ethernet
You can use the following command to get
information about the driver and firmware version of
your Ethernet card as follows:
# ethtool -i eth0
A typical output for the command follows:
driver: vmxnet
version: 2.0.1.1
firmware-version: N/A
bus-info: 0000:00:11.0
—Parvez Ansari, iamnetizen@gmail.com
Defrag your databases
Whenever you change the structure of a MySQL
database, or remove a lot of data from it, the files can
become fragmented resulting in a loss of performance,
particularly when running queries. Just remember to
run the optimiser every time you make any changes to
the database:
mysqlcheck -o <databasename>
—Remin Raphael, remin13@gmail.com
Restoring defaults in KDE4
Sometimes while personalising your panel you
may accidentally delete it. And then you may want to
restore the distro's default panel back again. This is how
we do it on KDE 4.
Log out and open a command prompt using
Ctrl+Alt+F1. Then log in as the same user and run this
command:
rm .kde4/share/config/plasma-appletsrc
This is the file where configurations are stored
for any user. If you remove it, the default settings will
reappear. Use Ctrl+Alt+F7 in order to access the X server
to log back in.
—Roshan Kumar Singh,
singh.roshan08@gmail.com
I/O address, IRQ number of serial ports
Those of you who are writing device drivers for serial
ports should know the I/O address of each serial port and
its IRQ number. To find out, type the following command:
setserial -g /dev/ttyS*
You should get something similar to what’s
shown below:
/dev/ttyS0, UART: 16550A, Port: 0x03f8, IRQ: 4
/dev/ttyS1, UART: unknown, Port: 0x02f8, IRQ: 3
/dev/ttyS2, UART: unknown, Port: 0x03e8, IRQ: 4
/dev/ttyS3, UART: unknown, Port: 0x02e8, IRQ: 3
ttyS0 - first serial port
port :0X03f8 - i/o address
IRQ-4 - interrupt number of serial port
—Veeraiyan C, veeraiyan@gmail.com
What have you done?
The history command will give you the complete
history of all the commands you've run till now along
with their serial numbers. For example:
$ history
1 su -
2 kmail
3 rm -rf .kde4/share/apps/kmail/mail
4 rm -rf .mozilla/
5 rpm -qa | grep flash
6 top
7 rpm -qa | grep rpm
8 ps -A | grep rpm
9 cd /var/lib/flash-player-plugin/
10 su -
There is a history manipulation command too
called fc. Type:
fc 9
This will allow you to edit the command using
the Vim editor. When you save and exit, it runs the
command automatically.
—Ashraf Ali, ashrafd2005@gmail.com
Share Your Linux Recipes!
The joy of using Linux is in finding ways to get around
problems—take them head on, defeat them! We invite you
to share your tips and tricks with us for publication in LFY
so that they can reach a wider audience. Your tips could be
related to administration, programming, troubleshooting or
general tweaking. Submit them at www.linuxforu.com. The
sender of each published tip will get an LFY T-shirt.
www.LinuxForU.com  |  LINUX For You  |  NOVEMBER 2009  |  93
CodeSport
Welcome to another instalment of CodeSport. This is a special Diwali Edition in which
we feature 20 interesting programming questions often asked in interviews.
A
s you know, every month we discuss
one specific topic in programming and
feature a couple of coding questions
related to it. However, we will take a
break this month since many readers have asked
me for programming questions that they might
find useful to practice and warm up for prior to an
interview. So here are 20 interesting programming
questions covering various topics in algorithms and
data structures. I will leave these questions open
for our readers to answer, and we will feature their
solutions in next month’s column. Let's get started
with the easier ones.
(1) Can you have both const and volatile qualifiers
applied to a single declaration in C? If so, can
you give an example? If not, why not?
(2) Consider the following code snippet:
main()
{ you find the one element that has no duplicate
int a, b;
a = foo() ;
b = foo () ;
printf(“a = %d b =%d \n”, a, b);
} more than N/2 times in the array. For instance,
You do not know anything about function
‘foo’ except that it returns an integer.
Are the values of a and b printed by the
printf function the same? If not, can you give
an example of function ‘foo’ which will cause a
and b to be different?
(3) Given a word, can you find all its anagrams?
If you were asked to do this for only one word,
what would be your solution? If you were
asked to find the anagrams for 10,000 words,
would your solution change?
(4) What is the time complexity of searching for
an element in a…
a) Linked list containing N elements
b) Hash table containing N elements
c) Binary search tree containing N elements
d) A binary heap containing N elements
e) A d-heap containing N elements
(5) Consider the following code snippet:
int find_fib (int N)
94  |  NOVEMBER 2009  |  LINUX For You  |  www.LinuxForU.com
Sandya Mannarswamy
{
assert (N > 0);
int f1 = 1;
int f2 = 1;
if (N < 2)
return 1;
return (find_fib(N-1) + find_fib((N-2));
}
Given that find_fib is called from main with N
as 25, how many total calls are made to find_fib?
Sorting/searching/string
manipulation problems
(6) You are given an array of 2n+1 integers. You
are told that except for one element, all other
elements have a duplicate in the array. Can
in the array? What is the time complexity of
your solution?
(7) You are given an array A of N integers. A
majority element M is an element that appears
given the array of integers, 10, 6, 10, 3, 10, 10
is the majority element. Given the array 10, 6,
10, 3, 10, 21, 5, there is no majority element.
For the given array of N integers, write an
algorithm to find whether a majority element
exists and if so, what is it? The algorithm
should have a worst-case complexity of O (N).
(8) You are given two strings, S1 and S2. The
maximum length of either of the strings is N
characters. You need to create a new string
containing only those characters that appear
in both the strings. Remember that the trivial
solution is O (N^2) wherein we compare each
character of the first string to every character
in the second string. Can you come up with a
better solution?
(9) You are given a sorted sequence of distinct
integers, a1, a2, a3 …. aN. Give an algorithm to
determine whether there exists an index i such
that the element at the ith position is equal in
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
value to i. For example, in the sequence, -3, 4, 3, 34, 10, we
have a3=3, which satisfies the criterion; whereas in the
sequence -3, 40, 2, 12, 6, there is no such index i. What is
the complexity of your algorithm?
(10) Let’s suppose you are given an array A of N sorted
numbers that has been circularly shifted k positions to
the right. For example, (34, 40, 2, 12, 28) is a sorted array
that has been circularly shifted k=2 positions, while
(34, 40, 45, 61, 2, 12, 28) has been shifted k=4 positions.
Suppose you know what k is, give an O (1) algorithm to
find the largest number in A. If you do not know the value
of k, can you give an algorithm with a complexity of O
(N) for finding the largest number in A? Can you improve
your solution to an algorithm of complexity O (logN)?
(11) Design a data structure that allows you to search,
insert and delete an integer X in O (1) time in a table
(i.e., constant time, independent of the total number of
integers stored). Assume that 1≤X≤N. Also assume that
the maximum number of integers in the table can only
be M at any one time. You are given M+N units of space
available for the table. Though at first you may want to
use a flags array of M flags, note that you cannot initialise
the flags array since that would take a time of O (M) and
hence is not permitted. So you need to work with a flags
array that can contain uninitialised data.
(12) You are given an array of N integers. Some of the integers
are positive and others negative. You have to partition
the array such that all the negative elements occur first
and then all the positive elements. (There is no need to
sort the elements within the sub-partition of all negative
and all positive elements.) What is the time complexity of
your solution?
(13) Among all the spanning trees of a weighted and
connected graph, the one (possibly more) with the least
total weight is called a minimum spanning tree (MST).
There are well-known algorithms for determining the
MST of a given weighted connected graph G such as
Prim’s and Kruskal’s algorithm. Our question is as follows:
Given a minimum spanning tree, is the path between a
pair of vertices in a minimum spanning tree necessarily
the shortest path between the two vertices in the full
graph G? Give a proof or a counter example.
Graphs and trees
(14) All of you are familiar with tree traversals. Pre-order,
in-order, and post-order traversals are the three types of
tree traversals. If the root node is visited before either of
its sub trees, this is a pre-order. If the root node is visited
after visiting the left sub tree and right sub tree, then it
is a post-order traversal. If the left sub tree is visited first,
then the root node, followed by the right sub tree, then
it is an in-order traversal. Given only the pre-order and
in-order traversals of a tree, is it possible to construct a
unique binary tree from it?
(15) Given an undirected graph G (V, E), where V is the set
of vertices and E is the set of edges, and given that all
Guest Column  |  CodeSport
vertices have an even degree, can you give an algorithm
to determine whether there exists a subset S of k vertices
in a graph G, such that every edge in G is incident upon
at least one vertex in S?
A few more challenging questions
(16) Given three arrays A, B and C of integers containing
positive and negative numbers, we have to determine if
there are three elements a € A, b € B and c € C such that
their sum a+b+c is equal to zero.
(17) Given an input array of distinct 100,000 integers
to be sorted, you are told that you have memory
available only for 1,000 numbers at a time. You have
no constraints in terms of disk storage. Can you come
up with an algorithm to sort the 100,000 numbers? If
you are told that the range of values of the input array
is also 1 to 100,000, how would your solution change?
What would be your solution if the input array
contained duplicates?
(18) Given the following code snippet:
bool foo (int n)
{
for (i=3; i < sqrt(n)+0.5; i+=2)
{
if (n % i == 0)
{
return false;
}
}
return true;
}
can you figure out what is the purpose of the
function foo?
(19) Given a 32-bit integer N, come up with an algorithm to
find the number of zeroes in the binary bit representation
of N. What is the time complexity of your algorithm?
(20) Let S be a sorted array of n integers. Give an algorithm
that finds the pair of elements x, y € S that maximises
|x-y|. What is the time complexity of your solution?
Readers are requested to send their solutions to these
questions, which I will discuss in next month’s column.
Also, if you are preparing for an interview in the computer
science programming field, you may find it useful to visit my
programming interviews discussion group ‘Computer Science
Interview Training (India)’ on LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com).
If you have any favourite programming puzzles that
you would like to discuss on this forum, please send them
to me, along with general feedback at sandyasm_AT_
yahoo_DOT_com. Till we meet again next month, happy
programming. 
About the author:
Sandya Mannarswamy. The author is a specialist in compiler
optimisation and works at Hewlett-Packard India. She has a number
of publications and patents to her credit, and her areas of interest
include virtualisation technologies and software development tools.
www.LinuxForU.com  |  LINUX For You  |  NOVEMBER 2009  |  95
Developers  |  Column
Modelling Epidemics
Most of us have been affected by the fear of H1N1 (swine flu). As with any
epidemic, public health organisations need to model this pandemic too,
in order to be prepared with preventive or precautionary actions. In this
article, you will look at how Scipy can be used to model an epidemic using
the simple SIR model.
Python in Research, Part 3
T
he basic idea is that the
population consists of three
groups—the susceptible,
the infected and those who
have recovered. It is reasonable to assume
that the rate at which susceptible people
are infected will be proportional to the
possible pairs of susceptible and infected
populations, i.e., their product. It is also
reasonable to assume that the rate at
which people recover will be proportional
to the infected population. Finally, the
rate of change in the infected group will
be the difference between the infection
rate and the recovery rate. The SIR model
can, thus, be represented as a set of simple
ordinary differential equations (assuming
that there are no births or deaths):
 ds/dt = –bs(t)i(t) # rate of change
amongst the susceptible
 di/dt = bs(t)i(t) – ki(t) # rate of change
amongst the infected
 dr/dt = ki(t) # rate of change of those
who’ve recovered
If the factors b and k are known,
and the initial values of the susceptible,
infected and recovered populations are
also known, the above equations can be
integrated and a solution found.
An elementary example
Suppose 10 people in a city of a million
are infected. The infectious period of
a flu typically lasts for five days; so, an
estimated 20 per cent of the infected cases
recover each day.
Usually, the values of s, i and r are
96  |  NOVEMBER 2009  |  LINUX For You  |  www.LinuxForU.com
normalised so that the sum of the three is
1. In this case, the ratio of b:k is indicative
of the number of people infected by an
infected person. Assuming that each
infected person infects another two, what
will happen in the next 100 days?
Here's how you can find out by
substituting the values in the following
equation:
b = 2 * k = 0.4
k = 0.2
The Scipy package includes an
integrate module, which can be used
to compute the susceptible, infected
and recovered populations for each
succeeding day, for as many days as
needed.
import scipy as np
from scipy import integrate
def dif_eq(V,t,b,k):
"""
Compute the derivatives for the differential
equations
V = current values of [Susceptible, Infected,
Recovered]
"""
dVdt = np.zeros(3)
dVdt[0] = -b*V[0]*V[1]
dVdt[1] = b*V[0]*V[1] - k*V[1]
dVdt[2] = k*V[1]
return dVdt
P = 1e6 # a million
I0 = 10/P # 10 people are infected
S0 = 1 - I0 # Susceptible population
R0 = 0 # Initial Recovered
k = 0.2 # Infection lasts 5 days
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________
Figure 1: Susceptible, infected and recovered populations in a SIR model
b = .4 # Contact ratio is 2
t_array = np.arange(0, 100, 1)
RES = integrate.odeint(dif_eq, (S0,I0,R0), t_array,args=(b,k))
graph(RES)
You define a method dif_eq which computes the
derivatives for the system of differential equations. The
parameters to this method are an array containing the
current values, the current time and additional arguments
-- b and k, in this case.
The key method is odeint whose parameters are a
function defining the differential equations—for example,
the dif_eq above, a list containing the initial values, a
time array at which solutions need to be found, and any
additional arguments to the dif_eq function. The best way
to observe the results is graphically.
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
def graph(RES):
plt.subplot(2,1,1)
plt.plot(t_array, RES[:,0], '-', label='Susceptible')
plt.plot(t_array, RES[:,2], '-', label='Recovered')
plt.xlabel('Days')
plt.ylabel('Susceptible/Recovered')
plt.legend()
plt.subplot(2,1,2)
plt.plot(t_array, RES[:,1], '-', label='Infected')
plt.xlabel('Days')
plt.ylabel('Infected')
plt.legend()
plt.show()
It is at times easier to show sub-plots. In the example
above, a plot with two rows and one column is created.
In the first row, a sub-plot shows the susceptible and
recovered populations. The second sub-plot shows the
infected population. The result is shown in Figure 1. The
infections peak about 60 days after the outbreak and the
Column  |  Developers
maximum people infected at one time is about 16 per
cent, which is 1,60,000 in a population of a million!
Impact of vaccinations and quarantine
Vaccination results in a reduction of the susceptible
population. These people directly move into the
recovered category without being infected. You can
modify the dif_eq method as follows:
def dif_eq_vac(V,t,b,k,vac):
dVdt = np.zeros(3)
dVdt[0] = -b*V[0]*V[1] - vac
dVdt[1] = b*V[0]*V[1] - k*V[1]
dVdt[2] = k*V[1] + vac
return dVdt
If 1,000 or 5,000 people are vaccinated each day, you
will need to modify your code to include:
t_array = np.arange(0, 200, 1)
RES1 = integrate.odeint(dif_eq, (S0,I0,R0), t_array,args=(b,k))
RES2 = integrate.odeint(dif_eq_vac, (S0,I0,R0), t_array,args=(b,k,1000/P))
RES3 = integrate.odeint(dif_eq_vac, (S0,I0,R0), t_array,args=(b,k,5000/P))
Let’s suppose a fraction q of the infected are
quarantined. Hence, only (1-q) fraction will be a part
of the infected group. The remaining will be treated
as recovered/removed. The code for the differential
equations becomes, as follows:
def dif_eq_quarantine(V,t,b,k,q):
dVdt = np.zeros(3)
dVdt[0] = -b*V[0]*V[1]
dVdt[1] = b*(1-q)*V[0]*V[1] - k*V[1]
dVdt[2] = k*V[1] + b*q*V[0]*V[1]
return dVdt
Let’s assume that a third of the infected population is
quarantined. Add the code and call the plot routine:
RES4 = integrate.odeint(dif_eq_quarantine, (S0,I0,R0), t_array,args=(b, k,
.333))
graph2(RES1, RES2, RES3, RES4)
The modified graph routine shows the infected
populations, with and without vaccination:
def graph2(RES1, RES2, RES3, RES4):
plt.plot(t_array, RES1[:,1], '-', label='None')
plt.plot(t_array, RES2[:,1], '-', label='1000 per day')
plt.plot(t_array, RES3[:,1], '-', label='5000 per day')
plt.plot(t_array, RES4[:,1], '-', label='1/3 Quarantined')
plt.xlabel('Days')
plt.ylabel('Infected')
plt.legend()
plt.show()
www.LinuxForU.com  |  LINUX For You  |  NOVEMBER 2009  |  97
Developers  |  Column ______________________________________________________________________________________________________
Figure 2: Impact of vaccination and quarantine on the infected populations
The results are shown in Figure 2. The infections now
peak at 4 per cent about 70 days after the outbreak. The
effect of a quarantine is dramatic even with only a third of
the infected population isolated.
The intention of the above examples is to show the
ease with which various models can be created and to
analyse the impact of certain safety measures. Strategies
can be implemented and monitored. The effort is not in
coding. It is in developing models that can be verified
98  |  NOVEMBER 2009  |  LINUX For You  |  www.LinuxForU.com
by observations. The model can be enhanced to include
births, deaths and disease-induced mortalities and much
more, as shown in the second reference.
The concept of viruses has been applied to ideas (meme),
computer malware, viral marketing, etc. An interesting
example is an application to the modelling of a zombie attack
www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/08/zombies and www.
mathstat.uottawa.ca/~rsmith/Zombies.pdf.
With the Scipy integrate module, you are not just
restricted to understanding the dynamics of viruses and
their impact on humans. Another very important model
in biological systems is the predator-prey model. You can
find a tutorial on using the Scipy integrate module to solve
those equations at www.scipy.org/LoktaVolterraTutorial.
Furthermore, pyplot offers tremendous versatility and
flexibility in presenting the results in an attention-grabbing
way that quickly conveys the desired information. 
References for the SIR model
• www.math.duke.edu/education/ccp/materials/diffcalc/sir/
sir3.html
• wiki.deductivethinking.com/wiki/Epidemiology
By: Dr. Anil Seth
The author is a consultant by profession and can be reached at
seth.anil@gmail.com
 _____________________________________________
S.G. Ganesh
Understanding the sizeof Operator
In C/C++, the sizeof operator is used extensively. In this column, we’ll look at some simple and
interesting aspects of the sizeof operator in a Q&A format.
A
ssume that the sizeof pointer size and int is 4.
1) Which is the only ‘compile-time’ operator in C?
2) Can sizeof return zero?
3) What does the following statement print?
printf(“%d”, sizeof(printf(“hello”)));
4) What will be the output of the statement below?
printf(“%d %d”, sizeof(‘1’), sizeof(“1”));
5) What does the following program print?
#define SIZE(ARRAY) (sizeof(arr)/sizeof(arr[0]))
int size(int arr[]){
return (sizeof(arr)/sizeof(arr[0]));
} Given the declaration “int arr[10];”, sizeof(arr)
int main(){
int arr[10];
printf(“%d %d”, SIZE(arr), size(arr));
} the value 10, which is the size of the array.
6) What is the output of the following statement?
printf(“%d %d %d”, sizeof(void *),
sizeof(int *), sizeof(int **));
The answers
1) A compile time operator means that the operator
is evaluated entirely at compile-time. For the sizeof
operator, its use results in a constant integer value
(technically size_t type) at compile-time. So, the only
‘compile-time’ operator in C is sizeof (except for variable
length arrays where sizeof evaluates the size at runtime).
2) No. sizeof always returns the size of a variable or type,
and so it cannot be zero. If you give an incomplete type
(say a struct declaration or void type) as an argument
to sizeof, it will result in a compiler error.
Guest Column  |  The Joy of Programming
3) It prints 4. How about printing ‘hello’? No, it does
not print that! If sizeof is given a function call as
argument, it returns the size of the return type.
The return type of printf is int (printf returns the
number of characters it successfully printed). Since
we assumed sizeof int to be 4 here, the outer printf
prints 4!
4) The output will be 1 2. For sizeof(‘1’), the argument
is a character ‘1’, and size of a character is 1 in C.
For sizeof(“1”), the argument “1” is a string literal,
which has a terminating character ‘\0’ in it; so the
size of the string literal is 2.
5) It prints 10 1. C/C++ does not provide a direct
way to find the size of an array. One widely-used
‘trick’ is to divide the size of the array by the size
of the element of the array. The macro SIZE does
precisely that.
is 10 * 4 = 40 bytes, since the array of size 10 is
capable of holding 10 integers. The expression
sizeof(arr[0]) is nothing but sizeof(int), which is 4.
So the expression sizeof(arr)/sizeof(arr[0]) gives
Coming to the size function, in the signature
int size(int arr[]), the argument is “int arr[]”. The
argument is equivalent to the signature int size(int
*arr)! In C, we cannot pass whole arrays— we
can only pass the base address of an array. So,
in the size function, the expression “sizeof(arr)/
sizeof(arr[0])” results in 1 assuming the size of the
pointer and int is the same (4 bytes)!
6) The output is 4 4 4. The sizes of pointer types are
the same, irrespective of the type of the pointer
and the level of indirection! 
About the author:
S G Ganesh is a research engineer in Siemens (Corporate
Technology). His latest book is “Cracking the C, C++ and Java
Interview”, published by Tata McGraw-Hill. You can reach him at
sgganesh@gmail.com.
www.LinuxForU.com  |  LINUX For You  |  NOVEMBER 2009  |  99
A Voyage to the
Kernel
Segment 3.7, Day 17
W
e have looked at various aspects of
the Linux kernel over the past issues
of this magazine. We have also tried
to code and load our own module. Of
late, our focus has shifted to the theoretical side of
kernel design and implementation. I will try to wind
up the theoretical aspects over a couple of articles,
and then we can devote our time to trials.
We have already seen how the system organises
processes into the user and kernel space. Figure 1
summarises the overall architecture of the design
we have looked at. The figure encapsulates the
various concepts we’ve discussed— the interaction
of applications with the kernel, accessing system
calls, using glibc, etc. If you have missed any one
of the earlier columns, you can find them at www.
linuxforu.com.
In order to avoid some of the perplexities
associated with the actual operations taking place,
take a look at Figure 2, which illustrates the process in
depth so that novice users can comprehend it well.
When discussing the configuration (modification)
of kernel properties, I didn't mention the code that
performs the action. Now we can look at some of the
relevant portions that perform the related functions.
If you need to review the 'global and useful constants'
section, here is the associated code:
static ssize_t
ikconfig_read_current(struct file *file, char __user *buf,
size_t len, loff_t * offset)
{ module_init(ikconfig_init);
loff_t pos = *offset;
ssize_t count;
if (pos >= kernel_config_data_size)
return 0;
count = min(len, (size_t)(kernel_config_data_size - pos));
if (copy_to_user(buf, kernel_config_data + MAGIC_SIZE + pos,
count))
return -EFAULT;
100  |  NOVEMBER 2009  |  LINUX For You  |  www.LinuxForU.com
Part 18
*offset += count;
return count;
}
Now let's look at the ikconfig_init segment (a critical
one), which does the initiation:
static int __init ikconfig_init(void)
{
struct proc_dir_entry *entry;
/* create the current config file */
entry = create_proc_entry("config.gz", S_IFREG | S_IRUGO,
&proc_root);
if (!entry)
return -ENOMEM;
entry->proc_fops = &ikconfig_file_ops;
entry->size = kernel_config_data_size;
return 0;
}
And finally, here is the code that performs the clean-
up work:
static void __exit ikconfig_cleanup(void)
{
remove_proc_entry("config.gz", &proc_root);
}
module_exit(ikconfig_cleanup);
Device drivers
It is very interesting to meddle around with device
drivers (DD). And it is even more exciting to write our
own DD! So here in this column, I will restrict myself
to some of the basic ideas concerning DD and we will
come back to this when we start our trial section.
Well, as you might know, in Linux, devices are
represented as files. If you have not seen this, I suggest
you glance through your /dev/ directory. You might think
______________________________________________________________________________ Guest Column  |  A Voyage to the Kernel

that this is not a good idea since it allows unauthorised access to

hardware. But that’s not true. If you implement it in the proper
way, the device can never be accessed wrongly by a program. User Applications
User
In Linux, you can find many drivers and they are identified Space
by their unique major number. It is also interesting to note that GNU C Library (glibc)
since a particular DD may be used to control different physical
and virtual devices (the HDD and partitions, for example), the GNU/ System Call Interface
individual device will be assigned a minor number (ranging from Linux

0 to 255). You can comprehend this better if you look at the box Kernel Kernel
titled ‘Device driver nomenclature’. Space

Note the exceptions mentioned in the box. These exceptions Architecutre-Dependent Kernel Code
are seen for DD corresponding to terminals and serial interfaces
(which are assigned major numbers 4 and 5). Here, the devices Hardware Platform
with the number 4 are essentially virtual consoles, simple serial
interfaces and pseudo-terminals. You may note that the virtual
Figure 1: Tier architecture
consoles are assigned the numbers ranging from 0 (which
obviously corresponds to tty0!) to 63 and /dev/tty0 or /dev/console
User-space Kernel-space
corresponds to the current virtual console.
For a serial interface there are two logical devices—ttySn User Application C-Library Kernel System call
(dial-in device) and cuan (call-out device). When ttySn is
getpid(void) Load arguments
opened, the kernel restricts access to it for other programs eax=_NR_getpid,
transition to kernel (int 80) system_call
till the DTR line is active. And when it comes to the accessing
call
of cuan, the corresponding process will be provided with system_call_table[eax]

sys_getpid()
immediate access to the serial interface (provided it is not in
return
use). This will keep on blocking any process that tries to use syscall_exit

ttySn (assigned with minor numbers 64 to 127). You can also resume_userspace
see that the system assigns the minor numbers from 128 to 255 Return
for pseudo-terminals. The master terminal (ptyn) is assigned
128+n and the corresponding slave (ttypn) is given 192+n.
The major number 5 is assigned for the current terminal
and call-out devices. /dev/tty is given the minor number 0. Figure 2: User space and kernel space
And the corresponding cuan devices are assigned with minor
numbers 64+n. for USB Mass Storage devices:
Here is another list that could be handy when you write DD
to access some input devices: #include <linux/sched.h>
 11 char Raw keyboard device (Linux/SPARC only) #include <linux/errno.h>
• 0 = /dev/kbd (raw keyboard device) #include "usb.h"
 11 char Serial Mux device (Linux/PA-RISC only) #include "initializers.h"
• 0 = /dev/ttyB0 (first mux port) #include "debug.h"
• 1 = /dev/ttyB1 (second mux port) #include "transport.h"
 11 block SCSI CD-ROM devices
• 0 = /dev/scd0 (first SCSI CD-ROM) /* This places the Shuttle/SCM USB<->SCSI bridge devices in multi-target
• 1 = /dev/scd1 (second SCSI CD-ROM) * mode */
Akin to the filesystem (you can guess why it is so!), the int usb_stor_euscsi_init(struct us_data *us)
DD is required to be 'made known' to the kernel. This is made {
possible with the help of the driver modules that are initialised int result;
while booting the system. When you code, the following list of
functions will be helpful while performing this: US_DEBUGP("Attempting to init eUSCSI bridge...\n");
us->iobuf[0] = 0x1;
int register_chrdev(unsigned int major, const char * name, struct result = usb_stor_control_msg(us, us->send_ctrl_pipe,
file_operations *fops); 0x0C, USB_RECIP_INTERFACE | USB_TYPE_VENDOR,
int regi'ster_blkdev(unsigned int major, const char * name, struct 0x01, 0x0, us->iobuf, 0x1, 5*HZ);
file_operations *fops); US_DEBUGP("-- result is %d\n", result);

Since we are dealing with device drivers, I think some of return 0;

you might be interested in the special initialisers that we use }

www.LinuxForU.com  |  LINUX For You  |  NOVEMBER 2009  |  101

A Voyage to the Kernel  |  Guest Column ______________________________________________________________________________

/* This function is required to activate all four slots on

Device driver nomenclature the UCR-61S2B
* flash reader */
0 Unnamed devices (e.g., non-device mounts) int usb_stor_ucr61s2b_init(struct us_data *us)

0 = reserved as null device number {

struct bulk_cb_wrap *bcb = (struct bulk_cb_
See block major 144, 145, 146 for expansion areas.
wrap*) us->iobuf;
struct bulk_cs_wrap *bcs = (struct bulk_cs_
1 char Memory devices wrap*) us->iobuf;

1 = /dev/mem................................................Physical memory access int res, partial;

static char init_string[] = "\xec\x0a\x06\
2 = /dev/kmem......................................Kernel virtual memory access
x00$PCCHIPS";
3 = /dev/null.......................................................................Null device
4 = /dev/port............................................................... I/O port access US_DEBUGP("Sending UCR-61S2B initialization
5 = /dev/zero..............................................................Null byte source packet...\n");

6 = /dev/core.............................. OBSOLETE - replaced by /proc/kcore

bcb->Signature = cpu_to_le32(US_BULK_CB_
7 = /dev/full................................................. Returns ENOSPC on write
SIGN);
8 = /dev/random...................... Nondeterministic random number gen. bcb->Tag = 0;
9 = /dev/urandom..................Faster, less secure random number gen. bcb->DataTransferLength = cpu_to_le32(0);

10 = /dev/aio............................. Asyncronous I/O notification interface bcb->Flags = bcb->Lun = 0;

bcb->Length = sizeof(init_string) - 1;
11 = /dev/kmsg..............................Writes to this come out as printk's
memset(bcb->CDB, 0, sizeof(bcb->CDB));
1 block RAM disk memcpy(bcb->CDB, init_string, sizeof(init_string)
0 = /dev/ram0.............................................................. First RAM disk - 1);

1 = /dev/ram1..........................................................Second RAM disk

res = usb_stor_bulk_transfer_buf(us, us->send_
...
bulk_pipe, bcb,
250 = /dev/initrd..................................................Initial RAM disk {2.6} US_BULK_CB_WRAP_LEN, &partial);
if(res)

Older kernels had /dev/ramdisk (1, 1) here /dev/initrd refers to a RAM return res;

disk which was preloaded by the boot loader; newer kernels use /dev/
ram0 for the initrd. US_DEBUGP("Getting status packet...\n");
res = usb_stor_bulk_transfer_buf(us, us->recv_
bulk_pipe, bcs,
2 char Pseudo-TTY masters US_BULK_CS_WRAP_LEN, &partial);
0 = /dev/ptyp0........................................................... First PTY master
1 = /dev/ptyp1.......................................................Second PTY master return (res ? -1 : 0);
}
...
255 = /dev/ptyef...................................................... 256th PTY master
We can meddle with all these when we
begin our experimental session!
2 block Floppy disks In case the DD is already registered
0 = /dev/fd0....................................... Controller 0, drive 0, autodetect under a particular major number
and the corresponding file operation
1 = /dev/fd1....................................... Controller 0, drive 1, autodetect
does not match with those, then the
2 = /dev/fd2....................................... Controller 0, drive 2, autodetect register_chrdev() function will return a
3 = /dev/fd3....................................... Controller 0, drive 3, autodetect negative value.
128 = /dev/fd4................................... Controller 1, drive 0, autodetect You may come across two types
of devices—viz., block-oriented and
129 = /dev/fd5................................... Controller 1, drive 1, autodetect
character-oriented devices. In the
130 = /dev/fd6................................... Controller 1, drive 2, autodetect case of the first set of devices, any
131 = /dev/fd7................................... Controller 1, drive 3, autodetect given block can be read or written to
and so on ... at the will of the programmer (i.e.,
Continued on next page… they support random access). This
task is done using cache. This feature

102  |  NOVEMBER 2009  |  LINUX For You  |  www.LinuxForU.com

______________________________________________________________________________ Guest
of random access is essential for
filesystems. So you can guess why we
are mounting them as block devices.
In the second case, the access can
be processed sequentially (without
using a buffer). Devices like printers,
scanners, sound cards, etc, come
under this. But you may note that
some of the internal operations of
these devices still rely on blocks that
are, again, inaccessible randomly.
Polling count helps us to track errors
in the data terminal. It also has a time-
out feature, which is illustrated in the
following code:
if(need_resched) schedule();
} while(!LP_READY(minor,sta tus) && count <
LP_CHAR(minor));
if (count == LP_CHAR(minor)) { return 0;
/* Timeout, current character not printed */
outb_p( Ipchar,
LP_B(minor));
return 1;
}
You can find that the LP_
CHAR(minor) count is set to LP_INIT_
CHAR. This can be changed using ioctl.
The ioctl functionality (part of the
system call) is used to provide access to
the device kernel space.
Here is the code that performs the
initialisation activity of the function:
static long do_ioctl(struct file *filp, unsigned int cmd,
unsigned long arg)
{
int error = -ENOTTY;
if (!filp->f_op)
goto out;
if (filp->f_op->unlocked_ioctl) {
error = filp->f_op->unlocked_ioctl(filp, cmd,
arg);
if (error == -ENOIOCTLCMD)
error = -EINVAL;
goto out;
} else if (filp->f_op->ioctl) {
lock_kernel();
error = filp->f_op->ioctl(filp->f_dentry-
>d_inode,
filp, cmd, arg);
unlock_kernel();
} case FIBMAP:
Column  |  A Voyage to the Kernel
Continued from previous page… Device driver nomenclature
However, you may come across an 'exception' to this rule if you look at the
following list:
4 char TTY devices
0 = /dev/tty0.....................................................Current virtual console
1 = /dev/tty1..........................................................First virtual console
...
63 = /dev/tty63..................................................... 63rd virtual console
64 = /dev/ttyS0................................................... First UART serial port
...
255 = /dev/ttyS191.......................................... 192nd UART serial port
UART serial ports refer to 8250/16450/16550 series devices.
Older versions of the Linux kernel used this major number for BSD PTY
devices. As of Linux 2.1.115, this is no longer supported. Use major
numbers 2 and 3.
4 block
Aliases for dynamically allocated major devices to be used when
it’s not possible to create the real device nodes because the root
filesystem is mounted as read-only.
0 = /dev/root
5 char Alternate TTY devices
0 = /dev/tty.............................................................Current TTY device
1 = /dev/console......................................................... System console
2 = /dev/ptmx.....................................................PTY master multiplex
64 = /dev/cua0................................................Callout device for ttyS0
...
255 = /dev/cua191......................................Callout device for ttyS191
{
out: struct address_space *mapping = filp-
return error; >f_mapping;
} int res;
/* do we support this mess? */
static int file_ioctl(struct file *filp, unsigned int cmd, if (!mapping->a_ops->bmap)
unsigned long arg) return -EINVAL;
{ if (!capable(CAP_SYS_RAWIO))
int error; return -EPERM;
int block; if ((error = get_user(block, p)) != 0)
struct inode * inode = filp->f_dentry->d_inode; return error;
int __user *p = (int __user *)arg;
lock_kernel();
switch (cmd) { res = mapping->a_ops-
>bmap(mapping, block);
www.LinuxForU.com  |  LINUX For You  |  NOVEMBER 2009  |  103
A Voyage to the Kernel  |  Guest Column ______________________________________________________________________________

unlock_kernel(); unsigned int cmd, unsigned long arg);

return put_user(res, p); static int sock_fasync(int fd, struct file *filp, int on);
} static ssize_t sock_readv(struct file *file, const struct iovec *vector,
case FIGETBSZ: unsigned long count, loff_t *ppos);
if (inode->i_sb == NULL) static ssize_t sock_writev(struct file *file, const struct iovec *vector,
return -EBADF; unsigned long count, loff_t *ppos);
return put_user(inode->i_sb->s_blocksize, p); static ssize_t sock_sendpage(struct file *file, struct page *page,
case FIONREAD: int offset, size_t size, loff_t *ppos, int more);
return put_user(i_size_read(inode) - filp->f_pos, p);
} static struct file_operations socket_file_ops = {
.owner = THIS_MODULE,
return do_ioctl(filp, cmd, arg); .llseek = no_llseek,
} .aio_read = sock_aio_read,
.aio_write = sock_aio_write,
Networking .poll = sock_poll,
Today, we will look at some of the fundamental functionalities .unlocked_ioctl = sock_ioctl,
(that can handle network services) required when you code. .mmap = sock_mmap,
Since some of our readers may not have a strong background .open = sock_no_open, /* special open code to disallow open via /proc
in networking, we will spend some time reviewing the basic */
networking related concepts. .release = sock_close,
In Linux, you can use sockets for accessing network .fasync = sock_fasync,
services. And you can employ the following functionalities .readv = sock_readv,
to do higher-end tasks: .writev = sock_writev,
.sendpage = sock_sendpage
int socket(int addr_fami Ly,int type,int protocol); };
int bind(int s,struct sockaddr *address,int address_len);
int listen(int s,int backlog); Various functions like net_family_write_lock are also included:
int connect(int s,struct sockaddr *address,int address_len);
int accept(int s,struct sockaddr *address,int *address_len); static void net_family_write_lock(void)
int send(int s,char *msg,int len,int flags); {
int sendto(int s,char *msg,int len,int flags, struct sockaddr *to, int spin_lock(&net_family_lock);
tolen); while (atomic_read(&net_family_lockct) != 0) {
int recv(int s,char *buf,int Len,int flags); spin_unlock(&net_family_lock);
int recvfrom(int s,char *buf,int len,int flags,
struct sockaddr *froro,int *fromlen); yield();
int getsockopt(int s,int level,int oname,char *ovalue,
int *olen); spin_lock(&net_family_lock);
iht setsockopt(int s,int level,1nt oname,char *ovalue, }
int *olen); }

The above code shows the set of C library routines that
are included in the interface. It is important to note that these
functions rely on the system call socketcall. The socket function
is initiated by the following code:
static int sock_no_open(struct inode *irrelevant, struct file *dontcare);
static ssize_t sock_aio_read(struct kiocb *iocb, char __user *buf,
size_t size, loff_t pos);
static ssize_t sock_aio_write(struct kiocb *iocb, const char __user *buf,
size_t size, loff_t pos);
static int sock_mmap(struct file *file, struct vm_area_struct * vma);
static int sock_close(struct inode *inode, struct file *file);
static unsigned int sock_poll(struct file *file,
struct poll_table_struct *wait);
static long sock_ioctl(struct file *file,
As I said, since networking in Linux is a vast subject, we
will be dedicating the next article entirely to it. I will also be
briefing readers about the basic concepts required to meddle
with networking in Linux. I would recommend that you refer
to an undergraduate module in networking, if you don't have
a clear picture. I will be including concepts related to the layer
architecture models, protocols, conversion algorithms, etc, in
the next column.
Happy kernel hacking! 
By: Aasis Vinayak PG
The author is a hacker and a free software activist who does
programming in the open source domain. He is the developer
of V-language—a programming language that employs AI
and ANN. His research work/publications are available at
www.aasisvinayak.com

104  |  NOVEMBER 2009  |  LINUX For You  |  www.LinuxForU.com

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Mumbai
Tel: 022-39878888
Email: marketing-in@redhat.com
Web: www.redhat.in
Hardware & Networking
Institute
Xenitis Technolab Pvt Ltd
Xenitis TechnoLab is the first of its
kind, state-of-the-art infrastructure,
Hardware, Networking and
I.T Security training institution
headquartered in Kolkata.
TechnoLab is the training division
of Xenitis group of Companies. It
is the proud owner of ‘Aamar PC’,
the most popular Desktop brand of
Eastern India. These ranges of PC’s
are sold in the west under the brand
name of ‘Aamchi PC’, in the north
as ‘Aapna PC’ and in the south as
‘Namma PC’.
Kolkata
Tel: 033-22893280
Email: srinku@xenitisgroup.com
Web: www.techonolabindia.com
FOSS Yellow Pages
The best place for you to buy and sell FOSS products and services
Dhiraj (Delhi) 09811206582, Somaiah (Bangalore) 09986075717
IT Infrastructure Solutions
Absolut Info Systems Pvt Ltd
Open Source Solutions Provider. Red
Hat Ready Business Partner. Mail
Servers/Anti-spam/GUI interface/
Encryption, Clustering & Load
Balancing - SAP/Oracle/Web/Thin
Clients, Network and Host Monitoring,
Security Consulting, Solutions,
Staffing and Support.
New Delhi
Tel: +91-11-26494549
Fax: +91-11-4175 1823
Mobile: +91-9873839960
Email: sales@aisplglobal.com
Web: www.aisplglobal.com
Advent Infotech Pvt Ltd
Advent has an experienced techno-
marketing team with several years of
experience in Networking & Telecom
business, and is already making
difference in market place. ADVENT
qualifies more as Value Added
Networking Solution Company, we
offers much to customers than just
Routers, Switches, VOIP, Network
Management Software, Wireless
Solutions, Media Conversion, etc.
New Delhi
Tel: 46760000, 09311166412
Fax: 011-46760050
Email: marketingsupport@
adventelectronics.com
Web: www.adventelectronics.com
Asset Infotech Ltd
We are an IT solution and training
company with an experience of 14
years, we are ISO 9001: 2000. We
are partners for RedHat, Microsoft,
Oracle and all Major software
companies. We expertise in legal
software ans solutions.
Dehradun
Tel: 0135-2715965, Mobile: 09412052104
Email: piyush@asset.net.in
Web: www.asset.net.in
BakBone Software Inc.
BakBone Software Inc. delivers
complexity-reducing data protection
technologies, including award-winning
Linux solutions; proven Solaris
products; and application-focused
Windows offerings that reliably
protect MS SQL, Oracle, Exchange,
MySQL and other business critical
applications.
New Delhi
Tel: 011-42235156
Email: ashish.gupta@bakbone.com
Web: www.bakbone.com
110  |  NOVEMBER 2009  |  LINUX For You  |  www.LinuxForU.com
To advertise in this section, please contact:
Clover Infotech Private Limited
Clover Infotech is a leading
technology services and solutions
provider. Our expertise lies in
supporting technology products
related to Application, Database,
Middleware and Infrastructure. We
enable our clients to optimize their
business through a combination of
best industry practices, standard
processes and customized client
engagement models. Our core
services include Technology
Consulting, Managed Services and
Application Development Services.
Mumbai
Tel: 022-2287 0659, Fax: 022-2288 1318
Mobile: +91 99306 48405
Email: business@cloverinfotech.com
Web: www.cloverinfotech.com
DeepRoot Linux Pvt Ltd
Pure & Exclusive Free Software
Business. Creators of the deepOfix
Mail Server. We provide: airtight
solutions, solid support and Freedom
We believe in: sharing, compassion
and plain action. Backed by full-time
hackers. Quick deployment, easy
management. Guaranteed.
Bangalore
Tel: 080-40890000
Email: start@deeproot.co.in
Web: www.deeproot.in
Duckback Information Systems
Pvt Ltd
A software house in Eastern India.
Business partner of Microsoft, Oracle,
IBM, Citrix , Adobe, Redhat, Novell,
Symantec, Mcafee, Computer
Associates, Veritas , Sonic Wall
Kolkata
Tel: 033-22835069, 9830048632
Fax: 033-22906152
Email: asis@duckback.com
Web: www.duckback.co.in
HBS System Pvt Ltd
System Integrators & Service
Provider.Partner of IBM, DELL, HP,
Sun, Microsoft, Redhat, Trend Micro,
Symentic Partners of SUN for their
new startup E-commerce initiative
Solution Provider on REDHAT,
SOLARIS & JAVA
New Delhi
Tel: 011-25767117, 25826801/02/03
Fax: 25861428
Email: amittal@hbsindia.com
IgnitionWorks
IgnitionWorks provides customized
IT solutions for small/medium
businesses by leveraging open source
technologies with excellent support
& affordable costs. Our expertise
include custom software development
& infrastructure deployment/support
for all industries.
Bangalore
Tel: 080-41243227, Mobile: 9611121452
Email: info@ignitionworks.net
Web: www.ignitionworks.net
Ingres Corporation
Ingres Corporation is a leading provider
of open source database software
and support services. Ingres powers
customer success by reducing costs
through highly innovative products
that are hallmarks of an open source
deployment and uniquely designed
for business critical applications.
Ingres supports its customers with a
vibrant community and world class
support, globally. Based in Redwood
City, California, Ingres has major
development, sales, and support
centers throughout the world, and more
than 10,000 customers in the United
States and internationally.
New Delhi
Tel: 011-40514199, Fax: +91 22 66459537
Email: sales@ingres.com; info@ingres.com
Web: www.ingres.com
Keen & Able Computers Pvt Ltd
Open Source Solutions Provider. Red
Hat Ready Business Partner. Mail
Servers/Anti-spam/GUI interface/
Encryption, Clustering & Load
Balancing - SAP/Oracle/Web/Thin
Clients, Network and Host Monitoring,
Security Consulting, Solutions,
Staffing and Support.
New Delhi-110019
Tel: 011-30880046, 30880047
Mobile: 09810477448, 09891074905
Email: info@keenable.com
Web: www.keenable.com
LDS Infotech Pvt Ltd
Is the authorised partner for RedHat
Linux, Microsoft, Adobe, Symantec,
Oracle, IBM, Corel etc. Software
Services Offered: •Collaborative
Solutions •Network Architecture
•Security Solutions •Disaster
Recovery •Software Licensing
•Antivirus Solutions.
Mumbai
Tel: 022-26849192
Email: sales@ldsinfotech.com
Web: www.ldsinfotech.com
Pacer Automation Pvt Ltd
Pacer is leading providers of IT
Infrastructure Solutions. We are
partners of HP, Redhat, Cisco,
Vwmare, Microsoft and Symantec.
Our core expertise exists in,
Consulting, building and Maintaining
the Complete IT Infrastructure.
Bangalore
Tel: 080-42823000, Fax: 080-42823003
Email: solutions@pacerautomation.com
Web: www.pacerautomation.com
Red Hat India Pvt Ltd
Red Hat is the world's leading open
source solutions provider. Red Hat
provides high-quality, affordable
technology with its operating
system platform, Red Hat Enterprise
Linux, together with applications,
management and Services Oriented
Architecture (SOA) solutions, including
JBoss Enterprise Middleware. Red
Hat also offers support, training and
consulting services to its customers
worldwide.
Mumbai
Tel: 022-39878888
Email: marketing-in@redhat.com
Web: www.redhat.in
Srijan Technologies Pvt Ltd
Srijan is an IT consulting company
engaged in designing and
building web applications, and IT
infrastructure systems using open
source software.
New Delhi
Tel: 011-26225926, Fax: 011-41608543
Email: business@srijan.in
Web: www.srijan.in
A company focussed on Enterprise
Solution using opensource software.
Key Solutions:
• Enterprise Email Solution
• Internet Security and Access
Control
• Managed Services for Email
Infrastructure.
Mumbai
Tel: 022-66338900; Extn. 324
Email: sales@technoinfotech.com
Web: www. technoinfotech.com
Tetra Information Services Pvt Ltd
One of the leading open source
provders. Our cost effective business
ready solutions caters of all kind of
 FOSS Yellow Pages
The best place for you to buy and sell FOSS products and services
Dhiraj (Delhi) 09811206582, Somaiah (Bangalore) 09986075717
industry verticles.
New Delhi
Tel: 011-46571313, Fax: 011-41620171
Email: sales@tetrain.com
Web: www.tetrain.com
Tux Technologies
Tux Technologies provides consulting
and solutions based on Linux and
Open Source software. Focus areas
include migration, mail servers,
virus and spam filtering, clustering,
firewalls, proxy servers, VPNs, server
optimization.
New Delhi
Tel: 011-27348104, Mobile: 09212098104
Email: info@tuxtechnologies.co.in
Web: www.tuxtechnologies.co.in
Veeras Infotek Private Limited
An organization providing solutions
in the domains of Infrastructure
Integration, Information Integrity,
Business Applications and
Professional Services.
Chennai
Tel: 044-42210000, Fax: 28144986
Email: info@veeras.com
Web: www.veeras.com
Linux-Based Web-Hosting
Manas Hosting
ManasHosting is a Bangalore-
based company that is dedicated in
helping small and midsize business
companies to reach customers
online. We believe that by creating
a website, all you have is just web
presence; but to get effective
traffic on your website, it is equally
important to have a well designed
one. This is why we provide the best
of Web Hosting and Web Designing
services. Also, our services are
backed with exceptionally good
quality and low costs
Bangalore
Tel: 080-42400300
Email: enquiry@manashosting.com
Web: www.manashosting.com
Linux Desktop
Indserve Infotech Pvt Ltd
OpenLx Linux with Kalcutate
(Financial Accounting & Inventory
on Linux) offers a complete Linux
Desktop for SME users. Its affordable
(Rs. 500 + tax as special scheme),
Friendly (Graphical UserInterface) and
Secure (Virus free).
To advertise in this section, please contact:
New Delhi
Tel: 011-26014670-71, Fax: 26014672
Email: info@openlx.com
Web: www.openlx.com
Linux Experts
Intaglio Solutions
We are the training and testing
partners of RedHat and the first to
conduct RHCSS exam in delhi for the
first time ever.
New Delhi
Tel: 011-41582917, 45515795
Email: info@intaglio-solutions.com
Web: www.intaglio-solutions.com
Linux Vendor/Distributors
GT Enterprises
Authorized distributors for Red
Hat and JBoss range of products.
We also represent various OS’s
Applications and Developer Tools like
SUSE, VMWare, Nokia Qt, MySQL,
Codeweavers, Ingres, Sybase,
Zimbra, Zend-A PHP Company, High
Performance Computing Solutions
from The Portland Group, Absoft,
Pathscale/Qlogic and Intel Compilers,
Scalix-Messaging solution on Linux
Platform.
Bangalore
Mobile: +91-9845009939, +91-9343861758
Email : sales@gte-india.com
Web: www.gte-india.com
Taurusoft
Contact us for any Linux Distribution
at reasonable rates. Members get
additional discounts and Free CD/
DVDs with each purchase. Visit our
website for product and membership
details
Mumbai
Mobile: 09869459928, 09892697824
Email: taurusoft@gmail.com
Web: www.taurusoft.netfirms.com
Software Subscriptions
Blue Chip Computers
Available Red Hat Enterprise Linux,
Suse Linux Enterprise Server /
Desktop, JBoss, Oracle, ARCserve
Backup, AntiVirus for Linux, Verisign/
Thawte/GeoTrust SSL Certificates
and many other original software
licenses.
Mumbai
Tel: 022-25001812, Mobile: 09821097238
Email: bluechip@vsnl.com
Web: www.bluechip-india.com
Software Development
Carizen Software (P) Ltd
Carizen’s flagship product is Rainmail
Intranet Server, a complete integrated
software product consisting modules
like mail sever, proxy server, gateway
anti-virus scanner, anti-spam,
groupware, bandwidth aggregator &
manager, firewall, chat server and fax
server. Infrastructure.
Chennai
Tel: 044-24958222, 8228, 9296
Email: info@carizen.com
Web: www.carizen.com
DeepRoot Linux Pvt Ltd
Pure & Exclusive Free Software
Business. Creators of the deepOfix
Mail Server. We provide: airtight
solutions, solid support and Freedom
We believe in: sharing, compassion
and plain action. Backed by full-time
hackers. Quick deployment, easy
management. Guaranteed.
Bangalore
Tel: 080-40890000
Email: start@deeproot.co.in
Web: www.deeproot.in
InfoAxon Technologies Ltd
InfoAxon designs, develops and
supports enterprise solutions stacks
leveraging open standards and open
source technologies. InfoAxon’s focus
areas are Business Intelligence, CRM,
Content & Knowledge Management
and e-Learning.
Noida
Tel: 0120-4350040, Mobile: 09810425760
Email: sales@infoaxon.com
Web: http://opensource.infoaxon.com
Integra Micro Software Services (P)
Ltd
Integra focuses on providing
professional services for software
development and IP generation
to customers. Integra has a major
practice in offering Telecom Services
and works for Telecom companies,
Device Manufacturers, Networking
companies, Semiconductor and
Application development companies
across the globe.
Bangalore
www.LinuxForU.com  |  LINUX For You  |  NOVEMBER 2009  |  111
Tel: 080-28565801/05, Fax: 080-28565800
Email: tpvarun@integramicro.com
Web: www.integramicroservices.com
iwebtune.com Pvt Ltd
iwebtune.com is your one-stop, total
web site support organisation. We
provide high-quality website services
and web based software support to
any kind of websites, irrespective of
the domain or the industry segments.
Bangalore
Tel: 080-4115 2929
Email: santosh@iwebtune.com
Web: www.iwebtune.com
Sarvasv Technologies Pvt Ltd
Web OSX Windows Linux Mobile
LAMP W3C apps. Agile, BDD,
TDD development. On-Demand,
SaaS, ERP, CRM, HRM. Open
Source integration. Online project
management. VCS (git, svn).
automated deployment.
Greater Noida
Mobile: 09711472457, 09810270848
Email: sales@sarvasv.in
Website: www.sarvasv.in
Unistal Systems Pvt Ltd
Unistal is pioneer in Data Recovery
Software & Services. Also Unistal is
national sales & support partner for
BitDefender Antivirus products.
New Delhi
Tel: 011-26288583, Fax: 011-26219396
Email: isales@unistal.com
Web: www.unistal.com
Software and Web
Development
Bean eArchitect Integrated Services
Pvt Ltd
Application Development, Web
Design, SEO, Web Marketing, Web
Development.
Navi Mumbai
Tel: 022-27821617, Mobile: 9820156561
Fax: 022-27821617
Email: infodesk@beanarchitect.com
Web: www.beanarchitect.com
Mr Site Takeaway Website Pvt Ltd
Our product is a unique concept in
India usingwhich a person without
having any technical knowledge can
create his website within 1 hour; we
also have a Customer Care Center in
India for any kind ofafter sales help. We
are already selling it world over with
over 65,000 copiessold. It comes with
FREE Domain Name, Web Hosting and
FOSS Yellow Pages
The best place for you to buy and sell FOSS products and services
Dhiraj (Delhi) 09811206582, Somaiah (Bangalore) 09986075717
Customer Care Center forFree Support
via Phone and Email and features like
PayPal Shopping Cart, Guestbook,
Photo Gallery, Contact Form, Forums,
Blogs and many more. The price
ofcomplete package is just Rs 2,999
per year.
Patiala
Mobile: 91-9780531682
Email: pardeep@mrsite.co.in
Web: www.mrsite.co.in
Salah Software
We are specialized in developing
custom strategic software solutions
using our solid foundation on focused
industry domains and technologies.
Also providing superior Solution Edge
to our Clients to enable them to gain
a competitive edge and maximize
their Return on Investments (ROI).
New Delhi
Tel: 011-41648668, 66091565
Email: ceo@salahsoftware.com
Web: www.salahsoftware.com
Thin Client Solutions
Digital Waves
The ‘System Integration’ business
unit offers end-to-end Solutions on
Desktops, Servers, Workstations, HPC
Clusters, Render Farms, Networking,
Security/Surveillance & Enterprise
Storage. With our own POWER-X
branded range of Products, we offer
complete Solutions for Animation,
HPC Clusters, Storage & Thin-Client
Computing
Mobile: 09880715253
Email: ranga@digitalwaves.in
Web: www.digitalwaves.in
Enjay Network Solutions
Gujarat based ThinClient Solution
Provider. Providing Small Size
ThinClient PCs & a Full Featured
ThinClient OS to perfectly suite
needs of different working
environment. Active Dealer Channel
all over India.
Gujarat
Tel.: 0260-3203400, 3241732, 3251732,
Mobile: 09377107650, 09898007650
Email: info@enjayworld.com
Web: www.enjayworld.com
Training for Corporate
Bascom Bridge
Bascom Bridge is Red Hat Certified
partner for Enterprise Linux 5 and also
112  |  NOVEMBER 2009  |  LINUX For You  |  www.LinuxForU.com
To advertise in this section, please contact:
providing training to the individuals
and corporate on other open source
technologies like PHP, MySQL etc.
Ahmedabad
Tel: 079-27545455—66
Fax: 079-27545488
Email: info@bascombridge.com
Web: www.bascombridge.com
Brainnet
Kolkata
Tel: 033-40076450
Email: brainnet@brainware-india.com
Web: www.brainware-india.com
Centre for Excellence in Telecom
Technology and Management
(CETTM), MTNL
MTNL’s Centre for Excellence
in Telecom Technology and
Management (CETTM) is a state of
the art facility to impart Technical,
Managerial and corporate training to
Telecom; Management personnel.
CETTM has AC lecture halls,
computer Labs and residential
facility.
Mumbai
Tel: 022-25714500, 25714586, 25714585,
25714586
Fax: 022-25706700
Email: contact@cettm.mtnl.in
Web: http://cettm.mtnl.in/infra
Complete Open Source Solutions
RHCT, RHCE and RHCSS training.
Hyderabad
Tel: 040-66773365, 9849742065
Email: nayak.sujeet@gmail.com
Web: www.cossindia.com
ElectroMech
Redhat Linux and open source
solution , RHCE, RHCSS training
and exam center,Ahmedabad and
Vadodara
Ahmedabad
Tel: 079-40027898
Email: electromech@electromech.info
Web: www.electromech.info
Focuz Infotech
Focuz Infotech Advanced Education
is the quality symbol of high-end
Advanced Technology Education in
the state. We are providing excellent
services on Linux Technology
Training, Certifications and live
projects to students and corporates,
since 2000.
Cochin
Tel: 0484-2335324
Email: enquiry@focuzinfotech.com
Web: www.focuzinfotech.com
G-TEC Computer Education
ISO 9001:2000 certified IT
Company, International Testing
Centre, Specialised in Multimedia
& Animation, conduct MCP,
MCSE 2000, MCDBA and MCSA
certificates, CCNA, CCNP,
the Only authorized centre by
INTERNATIONAL AND EUROPEAN
COMPUTER UNION to conduct
ICDL, Adobe Certifications, training
on Web Designing, Tally, Spoken
English. Conducts Corporate and
institutional training. International
certifications issued.
Bangalore
Tel: 080-43567000
Email: gtec.indiranagar@gmail.com
Gujarat Infotech Ltd
GIL is a IT compnay and 17 years of
expericence in computer training field.
We have experience and certified
faculty for the open Source courses
like Redhat, Ubantoo,and PHP, Mysql
Ahmedabad
Tel: 079-27452276, Fax: 27414250
Email: info@gujaratinfotech.com
Web: www.gujaratinfotech.com
Lynus Academy Pvt Ltd
India’s premier Linux and OSS training
institute.
Chennai
Tel: 044-42171278, 9840880558
Email: contactus@lynusacademy.com
Web: www.lynusacademy.com
Linux Learning Centre Private Limited
Pioneers in training on Linux
technologies.
Bangalore
Tel:080-22428538, 26600839
Email: info@linuxlearningcentre.com
Web: www.linuxlearningcentre.com
Maze Net Solutions (P) Ltd
Maze Net Solution (P) Ltd, is a pioneer
in providing solutions through on
time, quality deliverables in the fields
of BPO, Software and Networking,
while providing outstanding training
to aspiring IT Professionals and Call
Center Executives. Backed by a team
of professional workforce and global
alliances, our prime objective is to offer
the best blend of technologies in the
spheres of Information Technology (IT)
and Information Technology Enabled
Services (ITES).
Chennai
Tel: 044-45582525
Email: info@mazenetsolution.com
Web: www.mazenetsolution.com
Netweb Technologies
Simplified and scalable storage solutions.
Bangalore
Tel: 080-41146565, 32719516
Email: info@netwebindia.com
Web: www.netwebindia.com
New Horizons India Ltd
New Horizons India Ltd, a joint
venture of New Horizons Worldwide,
Inc. (NASDAQ: NEWH) and
the Shriram group, is an Indian
company operational since 2002
with a global foot print engaged
in the business of knowledge
delivery through acquiring, creating,
developing, managing, lending and
licensing knowledge in the areas
of IT, Applied Learning. Technology
Services and Supplementary
Education. The company has pan
India presence with 15 offices and
employs 750 people.
New Delhi
Tel: 011-43612400
Email: info@nhindia.com
Web: www.nhindia.com
Network NUTS
India’s only Networking Institute
by Corporate Trainers. Providing
Corporate and Open classes
for RHCE / RHCSS training and
certification. Conducted 250+ Red
Hat exams with 95% result in last 9
months. The BEST in APAC.
New Delhi
Tel: 46526980-2
Mobile: 09310024503, 09312411592
Email: info@networknuts.net
Web: www.networknuts.net
STG International Ltd
An IT Training and Solution
Company,Over an experience of
14years.We are ISO 9001:2000
Certified.Authorised Training Partners
of Red Hat & IBM-CEIS. We cover all
Software Trainings.
New Delhi
Tel: 011-40560941-42, Mobile:
09873108801
Email: rakhi@stg.in
Web: www.stgonline.com
www.stgglobal.com
TNS Institute of Information
Technology Pvt Ltd
Join RedHat training and get
100% job gaurantee. World's most
respected Linux certification. After
RedHat training, you are ready to join
as a Linux Administrator or Network
Engineer.
 FOSS Yellow Pages
The best place for you to buy and sell FOSS products and services
Dhiraj (Delhi) 09811206582, Somaiah (Bangalore) 09986075717
New Delhi
Tel: 011-3085100, Fax: 30851103
Email: nks@tiit.co.in
Web: www.tiit.co.in
Webel Informatics Ltd
Webel Informatics Ltd (WIL), a
Government of West Bengal
Undertaking. WIL is Red Hat Training
Partner and CISCO Regional
Networking Academy. WIL conducts
RHCE, RHCSS, CCNA, Hardware
and Software courses.
Kolkata
Tel: 033-22833568, Mobile: 09433111110
Email: enquiry@webelinformatics.com
Web: www.webelinformatics.com
Training for Professionals
AEM
AEM is the Best Certified Redhat
Training Partner in Eastern India since
last 3 years. AEM conducted more
than 500 RHCE exams with 95-
100% pass rate. Other courses—
RHCSS,SCNA,MCSE,CCNA.
Kolkata
Tel: 033-25488736, Mobile: 09830075018
Email: sinhatuhin1@gmail.com
Web: www.aemk.org
Agam Institute of Technology
In Agam Institute of Technology, we
provide hardware and networking
training since last 10 years. We
specialise in open source operating
systems like Red Hat Linux since we
are their preferred training partners.
Dehradun
Tel: 0135-2673712, Mobile: 09760099050
Web: www.agamtecindia.com
Amritha Institute of Computer
Technology
Amrita Technologies provides
an extensive training in high
end certification programs and
Networking Solutions like Redhat
Linux, Redhat Security Services,
Cisco, Sun Solaris, Cyber Security
Program IBM AIX and so on with a
strong focus on quality standards
and proven technology processes
with most profound principles of
Love and Selfless Service.
Mobile: 09393733174
Email: aict.hybd@amrita.ac.in
Web: www.amritahyd.org
Centre For Industrial Research and
Staff Performance
A Unique Institute catering to
To advertise in this section, please contact:
the need for industries as well as
Students for trainings on IT, CISCO
certification, PLC, VLSI, ACAD,
Pneumatics, Behavior Science and
Handicraft.
Bhopal
Tel: 0755-2661412, 2661559
Fax: 0755-4220022
Email: crisp@crispindia.com
Web: www.crispindia.com
Center for Open Source Development
And Research
Linux, open source & embedded
system training institute and
development. All trainings provided by
experienced exports & administrators
only. Quality training (corporate and
individual). We expertise in open
source solution.Our cost effective
business ready solutions caters of all
kind of industry verticals.
New Delhi
Mobile: 09312506496
Email: info@cfosdr.com
Web: www.cfosdr.com
Cisconet Infotech (P) Ltd
Authorised Red Hat Study cum Exam
Centre. Courses Offered: RHCE,
RHCSS, CCNA, MCSE
Kolkata
Tel: 033-25395508, Mobile: 09831705913
Email: info@cisconetinfo.com
Web: www.cisconetinfo.com
CMS Computer Institute
Red Hat Training partner with 3 Red
Hat Certified Faculties, Cisco Certified
(CCNP) Faculty , 3 Microsoft Certified
Faculties having state Of The Art IT
Infrastructure Flexible Batch Timings
Available..Leading Networking
Institute in Marathwada
Aurangabad
Tel: 0240-3299509, 6621775
Email: aurangabad@cmsinstitute.co.in
Web: www.cmsaurangabad.com
Cyber Max Technologies
OSS Solution Provider, Red Hat
Training Partners, Oracle,Web, Thin
Clients, Networking and Security
Consultancy. Also available CCNA
and Oracle Training on Linux. Also
available Laptops & PCs
Bikaner
Tel: 0151-2202105, Mobile: 09928173269
Email: cmtech.bikaner@gmail.com,
kr.gupta.ashish@gmail.com
Disha Institute
A franchisee of Unisoft Technologies,
Providing IT Training & Computer
Hardware & Networking
Dehradun
Tel: 3208054, 09897168902
Email: thedishainstitute@gmail.com
Web: www.unisofttechnologies.com
EON Infotech Limited (TECHNOSchool)
TechnoSchool is the most happening
Training Centre for Red Hat (Linux-
Open Source) in the Northern Region.
We are fully aware of the Industry's
requirement as our Consultants
are from Linux industry. We are
committed to make you a total
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dreams of a professional career are
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Chandigarh
Tel: 0172-5067566-67, 2609849
Fax: 0172-2615465
Email: info@technoschool.net
Web: http://technoschool.net
GT Computer Hardware Engineering
College (P) Ltd
Imparting training on Computer
Hardware Networking, Mobile
Phone Maintenance & International
Certifications
Jaipur
Tel: 0141-3213378
Email: franchise_gt@gteducation.net
Web: www.gteducation.net
HCL Career Development Centre
Bhopal
As the fountainhead of the most
significant pursuit of human mind
(IT), HCL strongly believes, “Only
a Leader can transform you into a
Leader”. HCL CDC is a formalization
of this experience and credo which
has been perfected over three
decades.
Bhopal
Tel: 0755-4094852
Email: bhopal@hclcdc.in
Web: www.hclcdc.in
IINZTRIX E Technologies Pvt Ltd
No. 1 Training prvinder in this region.
meerut
Tel: 0121-4020111, 4020222
Mobile: 09927666664
Email: jai@iintrix.com
Web: www.iintrix.com
Indian Institute of Job Oriented
Training Centre
Ahmedabad
Tel: 079-40072244—2255—2266
Mobile: 09898749595
Email: info@iijt.net
Web: www.iijt.net
www.LinuxForU.com  |  LINUX For You  |  NOVEMBER 2009  |  113
Institute of Advance Network
Technology (IANT)
•Hardware Engg.•Networking
•Software Engg. •Multimedia Training.
Ahmedabad
Tel: 079-32516577, 26607739
Fax: 079-26607739
Email: contact @iantindia.com
Web: www.iantindia.com
IPCC
Bridging Gap with professionals.
Lucknow
Tel: 0522-3919496
Email: ipcclko@yahoo.co.in
Web: www.ipcc.co.in
Koenig Solutions (P) Ltd
A reputed training provider in India.
Authorised training partner of Red
Hat, Novell and Linux Professional
Institute. Offering training for RHCE,
RHCSS, CLP, CLE, LPI - 1 & 2.
New Delhi
Mobile: 09910710143, Fax: 011-25886909
Email: info@koenig-solutions.com
Web: www.koenig-solutions.com
NACS/CIT
We are Providing Training of LINUX to
Professional & Cooperate.
Meerut
Tel: 0121-2420587, Mobile: 9997526668
Email: Info@nacsglobal.com
Web: www.nacsglobal.com
NACS Infosystems (P) Ltd
NACS is a organization which is
providing training for all international
certification, and also NACS is the
authorized Training Partner of Redhat
and also having testing centre
of THOMSON PROMETRIC and
PEARSON VUE.
Meerut
Tel: 0121-2767756, Fax: 0121-4006551
Mobile: 09897796603
Email:info@nacsglobal.com,
mohit@nacsglobal.com.
Web: www.nacsglobal.com
Netdiox Computing Systems
We are one-of-a-kind center for
excellence and finishing school
focusing on ground breaking
technology development around
distributed systems, networks,
storage networks, virtualisation and
fundamental algorithms optimized for
various appliance.
Bangalore
Tel: 080-26640708
Mobile: 09740846885
Email: info@netdiox.com
FOSS Yellow Pages
The best place for you to buy and sell FOSS products and services
To advertise in this section, please contact:
Dhiraj (Delhi) 09811206582, Somaiah (Bangalore) 09986075717

NetMax-Technologies
Training Partner of RedHat,Cisco
Chandigarh
Tel: 0172-2608351, 3916555
Email: mail.netmax@gmail.com
Web: www.netmaxtech.com
Netxprt institute of Advance
Networking
Netxprt Noida is a Leading
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Noida
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Netzone Infotech Services Pvt Ltd
Special batches for MCSE, CCNA
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Neuron IT Solutions
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Plexus, incorporated in January 2003
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Chennai
Tel: 044-2433 7355
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Professional Group of Education
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Email: naidu.vikas@gmail.com
Q-SOFT Systems & Solutions Pvt Ltd
Q-SOFT is in a unique position for
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Bangalore
Tel: 080-26639207, 26544135, 22440507
Mobile: +91 9945 282834
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Software Technology Network
STN is one of the most
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institutes.
Chandigarh
Tel: 0172-5086829
Email: stn2001@rediffmail.com
Web: stntechnologies.com
South Delhi Computer Centre
SDCC is for providing technical
training courses (software, hardware,
networking, graphics) with career
courses like DOEACC “O” and “A”
Level and B.Sc(IT),M.Sc(IT),M.Tech(IT)
from KARNATAKA STATE OPEN
UNIVERSITY.
New Delhi
Tel: 011-26183327, Fax: 011-26143642
Email: southdelhicomputercentre@gmail.
com, southdelhicomputercentre@hotmail.
com.
Web: www.itwhizkid.com
www.itwhizkid.org
Ssytems Quest
Making Tomorrow’s professionals
TODAY
Bangalore
Tel: 080-41301814
Email: directorv@ssystemsquest.com
Web: www.ssystemsquest.com
Trimax FuturePerfect
A Div of Trimax IT Infrastructure and
Services Limited. Redhat RHCE,
RHCT Training & Exam Center,
MCTS, MCITP, MCSE 03, CCNA,
CCNP, Prometric Center.
Mumbai
Tel: 022-40681313, Mobile: 09987705638
Fax: 022-40681001
Email: futureperfect@trimax.in
Web: www.trimax.in
Vibrant e Technologies Ltd
Vibrant e Technologies Ltd. Is a
authorised Red Hat Test and Testing
Centre, has won the prestigious
award “ REDHAT BEST CERTIFIED
TRAINING PARTNER 2007-2008’’ for
Western region. Vibrant offers courses
for RHCE 5, RHCSS etc.
Mumbai
Tel: 022-26285066/6701
Email: vibrant@vsnl.net
Web: www.vibrantcomputers.com
Ultramax Infonet Technilogies Pvt Ltd
Training in IT related courses
adn authorised testing center of
Prometric, Vue and Red Hat.
Mumbai
Tel: 022-67669217
Email: unmesh.raote@ultramaxit.com
Web: www.ultramaxit.com
To advertise in this section,
please contact
Somaiah (B’lore:
09986075717) Dhiraj
(Delhi: 09811206582) on
011-2681-0602 Extn. 222
Yash Infotech
Authorized Training & Exam Center.
Best Performing Center in Lucknow for
RH Training and Examinations. LINUX
& Open Source training institute for
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Quality Training for RHCE, RHCSS,
PHP, Shell Script, Virtualization and
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Tel: 0522-4043386, Fax: 0522-4043386
Email: yashinfotech.lko@gmail.com
Web Hosting
IDS Logic Pvt Ltd
IDS Logic is a leading innovative
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Linux Web Hosting, Windows
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Tel: 0120-4235665, Fax: 0120-4235665
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Perfect Innovation
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• Web Hosting • Web Design
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Email: admin@webhostingspider.com
Web: www.webhostingspider.com

Want to register your organisation in

FOSS Yellow Pages For FREE
*

Call: Dhiraj (Delhi) 09811206582 Somaiah (Bangalore) 09986075717

or mail: dhiraj.khare@efyindia.com, somaiah.km@efyindia.com
*Offer for limited period.

114  |  NOVEMBER 2009  |  LINUX For You  |  www.LinuxForU.com

 presents

‘Unleashing New Opportunities: Indian Electronics Industry’

EFY SUMMIt 2009: A FIrSt OF ItS kINd EvENt whErE lEAdErS FrOM
INdIAN ElEctrONIcS INdUStrY wIll gAthEr UNdEr A SINglE rOOF
All industry reports are loud and clear in saying, “There’s tremendous opportunity for growth in the Indian electronics
industry.” Electronics For You Summit will help senior business decision makers in ‘Unleashing New Opportunities’
and figuring out strategies for tapping them.

who would Attend

the Agenda
• Which product or customer segments
promise growth?
• Which markets are still untapped?
• What’s new in terms of technology for
you to harness?
• What all is there in the Indian eco-system
for you to benefit from?
• How to fund your expansion? When to
go IPO?
Benefits of Attending
• Discover ‘where’ and ‘how’ to expand
your business
• Discover ‘untapped’ markets and product
segments
• Identify technologies that can change
your industry
• Identify technology trends that can affect
your markets
• Learn from success stories of others
• Meet and network with top-shots of the
electronics industry
• Heads of organisations (CEO, Chairman,
MD, Partner, etc)
• Senior heads of business units (VP, GM,
Head R&D, Head Operations, etc)
• Senior sales & marketing professionals
• Policy makers related to ICT and
electronics sector
• Infrastructure solution providers for ICT
and electronics sector
• Banking & finance firms
• Anyone with an interest in the fast
growing electronics industry

Book Your Seat Now! For Sponsorships and

Delegate Fee: Rs 5000* plus 10.3% tax; Early Bird Discount: 10% (till 15th Nov, 09) Other Branding Opportunities
To register, call: 09312888878 OR email at: efysummit@efyindia.com
Call 09312888878 OR email at: efyenq@efyindia.com
* Special group discounts available

Media Partners Supported By

Electronics Bazaar Electronics For You Eleb2b.com

EFYTimes.com Annual Guide

EFY Enterprises Pvt Ltd, D-87/1, Okhla Industrial Area, Phase 1, New Delhi 110020 Ph.: 011-26810601/02/03